The Clockmaker's Girl
by Ceres Wunderkind
Summary: Sixteen year old schoolgirl Sunny Moon has a secret... a secret that may be the key to ending the Holy War which has engulfed Lyra's world.
1. Home

_Home  
_

_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,  
You make me happy when skies are grey.  
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you,  
So please don't take my sunshine away._

Jimmie Davis

'Persons with manners,' said Aunt Sybil, 'do not slouch at the table. Nor,' she added, looking sternly at me over the top of her spectacles, 'do they permit their daemons to do so.'

'Cow!' whispered my Alfie.

'I say, Sybil,' said Daddy from the end of the table where he was helping himself to sprouts and carrots, 'do go easy on Sunny. It is the last day of the holidays, after all.'

'Good manners are very important, Ronald,' said my aunt. 'Sonya must understand that. You do understand that, don't you, Sonya?'

'Yes, Aunt Sybil,' I replied.

'Then sit up, girl! And don't speak with your mouth full.'

She turned to my father again. 'It was a pity that Sonya did not feel able to join us at Saint Jonas' this morning. Father Macpherson gave us a most illuminating and instructive address.'

'What address was that?' I said. 'The address of the Old Bull?' Our vicar was a regular visitor to the village pub.

'Sunny!' Daddy said.

'I shall choose to ignore that interruption. It was as foolish as it was ignorant and uninformed. Father Macpherson does a great deal of good work among the poor.'

'He does a great deal of boozing, you mean.'

'Please, Sunny,' said Daddy, and gave me _that_ look.

'If there are any more remarks of that nature it will become necessary for you to leave the table immediately.' Aunt Sybil's cat-daemon blinked his amber eyes and the fur along his back bristled in indignation. I hated to upset Daddy, so I lowered my eyes and said, 'Sorry, Aunt Sybil.'

'I should hope so. Father Macpherson is a good and holy man. His work deserves our full support, especially in such difficult times as we are now living through.'

'Amen,' said Daddy and I joined him, thinking of Gerry and trying to forget the creepy way Father Macpherson looked at me. As a rule I liked attending Divine Worship, but not at Saint Jonas'.

'Amen, indeed.' Aunt Sybil had the last word, as usual.

- 0 -

'Persons with manners,' said Alfie from his place on the pillow of my bed, 'do not eat with their mouths full.' He had Aunt Sybil just so - the angle of her neck, the stiffness of her back, the exact sound of her voice. I giggled, and threw my toy lion Noel at him. Alfie ducked, and the stuffed animal bounced off the wall, hit the bookcase and went flying out of the bedroom window. I think he landed in a rhododendron bush.

I had been sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the bed, but now I lay down and stretched myself out full-length on top of the blankets. Alfie snuggled down next to me, and I absent-mindedly stroked his silky-soft fur. As I ran my hand over and over along his back, smoothing and soothing him, a lovely warm feeling settled over us both and all my horrible thoughts of school and Aunt Sybil began to fade into the distance. I know what they say about petting your daemon too much - Miss Selborne spent a whole Personal Theology lesson last term going on about it - but it's so nice and all the other girls do it, so why shouldn't I? We didn't do our special thing, though.

My bedroom's right at the top of the house and it looks out over the garden, past Mummy's mulberry trees and the withy fence, to the fields of Hallbridge Farm. As it was early September the reapers were out bringing in the harvest, swinging their scythes and stacking the wheat in sheaves ready to be carted off to the mill. They stood in rows like soldiers on parade.

The window that overlooks the farm has real lead in it because our house is very old, and the glass is old too and quite hard to see through. Usually I keep the sash pulled up so I can see out and the air and the sounds from outside can come in. That way I can be inside and outside at the same time, if that makes any sense. Inside the walls are all covered with drawings I've made and stories and poems I've written, right back to when I was a little girl and only three or four years old. The drawings are of houses and trees like the ones I can see through the little diamond-shaped panes of the windows; or they're pictures of Mummy or Daddy or Gerry. Funny little stick-people, with their arms and legs and fingers and toes spread out like starfish and straight hair hanging down from the tops of their heads. They're always smiling, those people in my pictures.

My room's got a stable door, so I can open the top half and leave the bottom half shut if I want. Mummy had that put in when I was a toddler so I wouldn't fall down the stairs. I'm up in the old attic, you see? Mister Breve from the village plastered the walls for me and I had them painted white so it doesn't get too dark; except that now there are so many bits of paper - my drawings, mostly - hanging off it Mrs Frame says it's like washing day in here, and she laughs her funny laugh and I join in, even though Alfie and me have heard her say it every day of our life, nearly.

Because we're up in the attic the walls slope in where the roof is. This means that the grown-ups don't come in here very often (except for Mrs Frame, of course) because they bang their silly heads on the slopey bits. Alfie and me don't mind that one little bit. My bed is right up against one of the slopey walls. Then there's a bookcase with all my favourites in it, although I don't read them as much as I used to. I'm not a baby any more, and I was going to throw them away or give them to the poor children only Daddy said no, don't do that, you'll want them one day. Daddy's always right even when he's wrong, so I've kept the books and I even look at them occasionally. One thing I like about school is that they've got lots of books there, and they're not _all_ religious.

Next to the bookcase is my table, where I do my writing and my homework when I have to. There's an old chair in front of it - its legs have worn great big holes in the carpet - with a comfy cushion that I made out of curtain material and kapok and sewed up myself. I've got an old broken cup on the shelf with all my pens and pencils in it. When I'm writing for school I have to use a pen and hold it properly and observe the rules of penmanship and dot my i's and cross my t's (and I've probably got the apostrophes wrong there.) When I'm writing the stuff that's just for me I do it in pencil so I can rub out the mistakes or change the words that aren't quite right and so not waste paper. Daddy says that even though we can afford to buy all the paper we want we mustn't waste it. Oh, I've got a photogram of Gerry and Eugénie too, of course. I can see it from my bed.

Then there's an oak wardrobe with a looking-glass on the front standing against the only wall that doesn't slope in, next to the door. That only had my posh frocks and my nice sloppy home clothes left hanging in it now. My horrid stiff-starched school things were in my trunk; and that was standing next to the front door with a big, ugly, official Highdean School label on it, waiting for the carrier's van to come and take it away.

Yes, it was the last Sunday of the last week of the school holidays. In less than an hour I would have to catch the train up to London. It was time I changed into my school uniform and said my goodbyes. Some I'd said already. Regulus, my pony - I'd brushed him down for one last time, and stroked his mane and whispered in his ears and kissed his beautiful pale-grey face, and then he'd gone off to the stables. I wouldn't see him again until the next holidays. The servants - the ones we still had left - would wave me off. That left two others.

Oh well. Time to get changed, so I might as well get on with it. Not only was my school uniform frumpy and dull - grey skirt and brown stockings, brown blazer, brown tie and brown hat, it was made of horrible stiff scratchy stuff. Wool and thick-ribbed cotton and starch. What made it even worse was that everything was brand-new and extra-scratchy, stiff and uncomfortable. I'd grown a lot over the summer.

Grown or not, Aunt Sybil had made sure that all my new school clothes had plenty of spare room in them. The skirt hung down over my knees and the blazer sagged and bagged everywhere, however much I did up the buttons and tightened up the straps. I looked at myself in the looking-glass and nearly burst into tears. It was simply too awful - I looked like some dreadful fright of a librarian.

There's a thing you can do with the waistband of a uniform skirt to make it a little shorter and less likely to rub your knees raw, but I couldn't do it now. I had to go and see Aunt Sybil and wish her goodbye.

- 0 -

Aunt Sybil was sitting in Daddy's chair, behind Daddy's desk, in Daddy's study. I stood in front of her and tried not to look as furious and fed-up as I felt.

'Sonya. Why did you not knock?'

'I'm sorry, Aunt Sybil. I knew that you were in here, and that you were expecting me.'

'Nevertheless, you should have knocked.' _Why, what were you doing in here? What were you up to?_

'Yes, Aunt Sybil.'

'Sonya, you are going up to the Sixth Form this term, are you not?'

'Yes, Aunt Sybil.'

'Entry into the Sixth Form and the Senior School brings responsibilities as well as privileges. You are aware of that, I presume?'

'Certainly, Aunt Sybil.' This was quite true. Senior School girls were permitted to use the short cut by the Chapel. Junior School girls were not. And you could stay up half an hour later before bedtime.

'I have said this to you before, but I shall say it again. Your attitude to your studies is distinctly wanting. You show a lack of seriousness. Your school reports have been, at best, patchy'

'Yes, Aunt Sybil.'

'You must learn to apply yourself more diligently to your subjects, even when they do not interest you. Life does not consist of doing exactly as you like all the time.'

'No, Aunt Sybil.' I nodded, then I realised my mistake and shook my head. So did Alfie, scowling at Aunt Sybil's Agamemnon who arched his back and glared at him.

'Control your daemon!' Aunt Sybil snapped. Alfie crept to my blazer pocket. 'Alpharintus is as bad as you!'

I tried to look as steadily as I could at Aunt Sybil's fat, jowly face. Whenever my friends met her they liked her - Sunny's stout, jolly Aunt Sybil. They didn't know her like Alfie and me did.

'I shall be looking for excellent reports at the end of this term. Excellent, do you understand? If you are to progress to the University you will have to do much better at your studies than you have so far.' My aunt shook her head. 'Much better. And there is one other thing that I must tell you.'

'Yes, Aunt Sybil?'

'You have occupied the nursery for quite long enough. Too long, in fact. You must begin to grow up now, Sonya, and leave childish things behind you. I will have your stuff moved out of your old room and into the Azure Bedroom. You will find it spacious and far more suitable for the needs of a young lady of your age and social standing.'

'But.' I spluttered, lost for words. This was horrible. This was the most terrible thing she could have done, to put me out of my lovely bedroom under the eaves of the house, where the starlings came every summer to talk to Alfie and me.

'Do not think of trying to contradict me. In this, as in all matters concerning your welfare, I shall have my way. I know what is best for you.'

She would win this one, I knew it. While I was away at Highdean she would go through all my precious things and throw most of them away, probably. When I came back it would all be different and strange. It wouldn't feel like my home any more. I felt a little sick.

'Yes, Aunt Sybil.' There was nothing to be done - not now, anyway - and my legs were beginning to go numb from standing in one place. 'May I leave now?'

'Yes, you may. Kiss me goodbye, then. And Sonya?'

'Yes, Aunt Sybil?'

'Please do well next term. You owe it to everyone. Yourself of course, me and your father. And especially Gerald. He gave up a great deal for us. We must remember that, and do our very best to live up to the example that he set.'

How dare she! How dare she use my brother as a way of getting her own way with me! That did it. I turned my back on Aunt Sybil and stamped out of the room, slamming the door behind me as hard as I could.

- 0 -

Daddy was waiting by the car. 'What's up, Sunshine?' he said, seeing my face.

'It's _her_!' I cried out. 'The hideous old bat! Lecturing me, and throwing me out of my bedroom, and talking about Gerry, and...'

Daddy put his arms around me, and I let my face rest on his tweed shoulder and made it all salty-wet for him.

'I'm sorry, Daddy,' I said after a while, lifting my head. 'It's just so unfair.'

'I know, Sunshine,' he said. 'I know. Everything's desperately unfair. We've got to be brave, haven't we?' He looked so sad then, and I thought of Mummy and Gerry and how we were all leaving him, one by one, and I shook the tears out of my eyes and sniffled and said yes.

'Let's get going then shall we, sweetheart?'

Daddy opened the passenger door of the Ridgeworth for me and got in on the driver's side. Alfie sat on my lap and Daddy's beautiful lioness-daemon Eurydice settled down behind him, looking forwards over the steering tiller. With a loud clunk from the handbrake we set off, down the drive, out of the gates and through the village, in good time to catch the half-past three stopping train for London's Paddington station.

* * *

_Author's Note_

This story is the latest in an ongoing series which started more than three years ago with _The Reliquary_. I've added quite a lot to it since then.

Don't let that put you off reading this tale. You don't have to have read any of the previous yarns to follow this one. I'll make sure that any references to earlier events are adequately explained as we go along.

Oh, and by the way - if you're a Sraffie and you think you spot a passing reference to yourself among the characters that Sunny meets in the course of her adventures, you're probably right...


	2. The Chthonic Railway

_The Chthonic Railway_

_When Sunny gets blue, she breaths a sigh of sadness,   
Like the wind that stirs the trees,   
Wind that sets the leaves to swaying   
Like some violin is playing strange and haunting melodies._

Jack Segal and Marvin Fisher

'For heaven's sake!' Alfie said. 'Snap out of it, girl!'

'Shut up,' I replied. I had the right to feel a little upset, didn't I?

'No I won't.'

'Yes you will.' I looked around the compartment for something to throw at my stupid daemon, but everything was pretty well fixed in place. That only left my bag. I lifted it in what I hoped was a threatening way.

'You'll miss.' I threw the bag and, just as Alfie said, I missed. It landed on the seat facing me, but by the time it got there Alfie was somewhere else; where, I couldn't tell.

'Alfie?'

'I told you you'd miss.' Alfie sprang up from the floor and landed square in my lap. I coughed.

'You smell disgusting,' I said.

'They don't clean these carriages like they used to.'

'You smell of dust and dirt and leaf-ash.'

'Shouldn't have got in a smoking compartment, then, should you?'

'Oh! Oh! Shut up! You know I had no choice! And stop looking at me that way!'

Alfie jumped back down onto the floor and fetched my bag for me. Now it was dusty and dirty too. Oh well, it was no good making a fuss over it.

'Friends?'

'Thanks, Alfie. Yes - friends.' I gave him a hug, and tried not to let him see me wrinkle my nose. Not that that made any difference, of course.

The train stopped at Aldbrickham station, with a hissing of steam and a banging and jolting of its buffers. People got off and people got on, but nobody tried to get into my compartment because there was a big sign on it - RESERVED, BY ORDER - and nobody was going to risk trying getting in and being spotted and hauled off by the railway constables. The platform was pretty crowded and I guessed that lots of travellers were taking the last possible train up to London. There were quite a few couples, I noticed. They'd be saying goodbye to each other at Crècy, or London Bridge, or Eversholt station, leaving it as late as they possibly could. I remembered saying goodbye to Gerry like that, at Kings Cross, two years ago.

Oh, beggar it. I took a book - _Lady Audley's Secret_ - out of my bag and tried to read. We pulled slowly out of the station, past rows of people on the platform patiently waiting for the next train up to London. I expect there was standing room only in the rest of the train.

Privileged is what Aunt Sybil called it. 'Privilege has its responsibilities, Sonya,' she'd say. 'You are a very lucky, a most fortunate, girl if you would only see it. You have a beautiful home and all the necessities of life in abundance. Let me remind you that many others are not so fortunate as you. Not everybody has enough to eat, or a room of their own to sleep in. Not every girl is surrounded with affectionate - I may say _doting_ - relatives, as you are. Not every girl receives such an education as you do. I most certainly did not. You take too much for granted, Sonya. Altogether too much.'

And so on, and so on, and so on. But I didn't _feel_ lucky. Yes - the sentry had saluted Daddy at the station, and the station-master himself had halted the train, and held the carriage door open for me and handed me in, while the head porter saw to my trunk. Yes, I had a private compartment all to myself, and I wouldn't have to share elbow, knee and foot space with a bunch of total strangers. But I still had to go off to Highdean School and be ordered around by ugly old women - the monkey-women, we called them - and sleep in a nasty iron bed, and play lacrosse in the wet and learn Roman and Frankish and Algebra and crocheting until I became old and crotchety myself. Could anything be more boring, or less like what I really wanted to do? Well, Alfie?

'Worse things happen at sea.'

'Oh, Alfie!' I burst into tears. My daemon, my horrible, beastly, infuriating, lovely daemon, sprang to my shoulder.

'Sunny, I'm sorry. That was awful. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking.' Alfie nibbled my ear and I felt a little shiver run down my back.

'How _could_ you!'

'I'm... you know...'

'An idiot, just like me. I know.' I took Alfie in both hands and held him in front of my face. He was looking genuinely sorry, I have to say. 'How are we ever going to stay out of trouble with... all those people, if we can't stay out of trouble with ourselves? Why are you so bloody... so bloody daft?'

'You're daft too. You're impossible. You say the silliest things.'

We were both crying now. I kissed Alfie and he kissed me back.

'We're the daftest pair there ever was. Aren't we?'

'Yes. We're dafter than anyone. Ha-ha!'

'Ha-ha-ha!' I shouted as loud as I could. 'Ha-ha! Beggar them all!'

Paddington station was absolutely heaving. I mean _solid_. Alfie took one look at the crush and dived into my bag. Never mind the smell! It took all the elbow-work I could manage to get off the train - I was right, it had been standing room only - and away from all the smoke and grime. The platform was jammed, the booking hall was jammed and, when I finally got there, the concourse was worse than that. I took one look at the taxi queue and decided to take the Chthonic instead.

If Aunt Sybil had known that I was going underground she'd have had a fit of the vapours. The one time I'd suggested it - I was only nine and up to Town to visit the Exhibition - she's swollen up to twice her usual size. 'The Chthonic Railway!' she'd spluttered. 'I suppose the girl will ask to eat in a Brytish Restaurant next! Why don't we take a walk down the Ratcliffe Highway, or go drinking in a Limehouse tavern? Let's join the dope-fiends on the Embankment!' I got the message, as they say. Well-brought-up ladies didn't travel by the Chthonic Railway.

Stuff well-brought-up. If I was going to get to Crècy Station by five o'clock, I was going to have to rub shoulders with the hoi-polloi.

Anyway, it was different - fun - going by tube. I pushed and shoved my way over to the travelling staircase, skipped onto the top step the way I'd been told, and rode on it down to the ticket office as confidently as if I did it every day. I smiled ever-so-sweetly at the men standing in the queue by the ticket window - 'Oh, I'm so sorry, but I'm frightfully late. Would you mind...?' - and gave the poor tired-eyed girl behind the glass sixpence for a one-way ticket to Crècy. Then more push and shove down the stairs to the Orbital Line platform to wait for the next anticlockwise train. I stood right at the edge so I could see down the tunnel. I wanted to be first on the train so I could get a seat.

Alfie poked his nose out of my bag. 'Are we there yet?' The little chap was looking distinctly bad-tempered. Was he going to go into one of his sulks? I had an idea.

'No, we're not. Nothing like. You're just going to have to stay in there until we get to Crècy. Unless...'

'Yes?'

'...You'd like to come out and meet some nice sailors' daemons. Look!' I grinned and yanked Alfie out of the bag by his forepaws and held him up so he could see the blue-uniformed men who were jostling next to us. Not quite touching Alfie and me, naturally, but as close as they could get without being offensive.

That was one of the stupidest, most dim-witted things I've ever done. Alfie panicked, and so did I. He squealed and wriggled out of my grasp. I cried out in my turn as he fell to the platform and, losing his footing, tumbled over the edge. He landed on the rail and lay completely still. My head swam and my stomach tried to force its way out of my mouth. I felt my knees give way under me and I measured my length on the cold stone of the platform, banging my forehead hard against it.

I could hear a terribly loud roaring in my ears - or was it in Alfie's ears? My head was throbbing and strange patterns were pulsating somewhere behind my eyes; backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards. Through the blinking, criss-crossing shapes of grey-purple light I could see a row of dim anbaric bulbs set in the ceiling - but I could also see through Alfie's eyes the headlight of the train that was fast approaching the platform. I tried to scream 'Alfie! Get off the track! Get out of there!' but my voice wouldn't come, and Alfie couldn't move and neither could I.

We were going to die, and it was all so pointless, so stupid, so bloody ridiculous. It was so funny I was starting to laugh - I could see the report in the _Chronicle_:

_Stroppy Little Madam Throws Own Daemon In Path Of Oncoming Train, Perishes_

_From Our Special Correspondent_

_Spoilt schoolgirl Sonya Moon, 16, threw another of her silly tantrums Sunday afternoon..._

I found my voice at last. 'Hee-hee,' I screamed. 'Ha-ha-ha! You stupid cow. Now see what you've done to Daddy! Take that, Auntie. Up yours!' The roaring and flashing were getting louder and louder and brighter and brighter.

Then Alfie was there with me again, and he was singing a song that Peggy Williams had learned from her brother, about an Inuit girl. I loved it. We were happy, happy, happy. I joined in with Alfie, singing descant:

_So stand me a drink and find me a seat, and a yarn to you I'll tell,   
of Dead-eyed Dick and Mexico Pete, and a whore called Eskimo Nell._

What a fantastic song! We liked to sing it in the dormitory, once the monkey-women had gone to bed. All of it. All one hundred verses! I was just getting stuck into verse thirty-two, where the action really starts to warm up, when someone rudely interrupted me:

'Miss? Miss? Are you all right, miss? Can you hear me?'

'Shut up! What? Sorry!' I tried to sit up, but a gentle hand stopped me.

'You stay there, miss. You had a nasty fall.'

'Alfie? Where's Alfie?' I opened my eyes. A middle-aged woman in a nurse's uniform was bending over me. I was lying on a wooden bench in a cream-painted room. The walls were covered with posters and official notices. It was calm and quiet.

'Your daemon? He's here, look!'

Alfie was there, lying next to me. I grabbed hold of him and nearly squeezed the life out of him. 'Oh, Alfie!'

'Sunny!' We kissed, and the woman smiled down on us.

'He's gorgeous. What is he, a fox?'

'Alfie's a mink, Goodwife. You're right, he's beautiful.' I started to offer him for her to hold. It would have been all right, she being a nurse and all, but she shook her head. 'You hang on to him, love. You've had a nasty shock, slipping over like that. It knocked you right out - you were quite badly concussed. It's lucky you didn't go over the edge of the platform, either of you.'

'But he...' I shut up.

'Very lucky indeed.'

'I'm sorry but I don't know your name, Goodwife.'

'I'm Sister Crawford, and this is Michael.' Her bulldog-daemon nodded his head.

'Thank you for looking after me, Sister.' I sat up. The room - it was the Ladies' Waiting Room - tilted slightly around me before settling down again. I saw the clock over the fireplace. 'Oh no! Sister, I've got to be at Crècy station by five! I'll miss my train - I'll get into terrible trouble.'

'On your way back to school, were you?'

'Yes, Sister.'

'Well, you'd better not travel on any more tubes today. Mabel!' This was directed at the door. Another woman appeared at the door of the Waiting Room. 'Got room for one more inside?'

'If it's a little one.' Mabel was younger than Sister Crawford, with a freckled face and red hair tucked into a peaked cap. She looked at me. 'Oh yes, she'll be fine.'

I didn't understand. 'But I have to get to Crècy station!'

'That's where we're going. I've got to take some men over there now. Don't you see? I'm an ambulance driver. Look, here's my badge!'

I sat with Mabel in the front of the ambulance. Behind us were eight grim-faced soldiers with bandaged arms, legs and heads. 'I'm taking them over to Crècy and then they'll go on to Hayward's Heath. There's a physio hospital there.'

'Are they going to get well again?'

'Oh yes, they'll be fine.'

'They don't look fine.' Mabel looked at me.

'What do you know about it?' Mabel's chaffinch-formed Hal hopped from foot to foot on the dashboard. Alfie was back in my bag. We hadn't had a proper chance to make it up between us yet.

'I - I don't know.' I gulped. Mabel was looking stern. I could guess what she thought of me - this silly little schoolgirl.

'They _will_ be fine. Look, believe me. I've seen them go and I've seen them return.'

'And get shipped back to the Front.'

'Yes, of course.' I fell silent. Mabel was driving fast, the gas-engine under the ambulance's bonnet chuffing and blowing under the strain.

'Don't I know you from somewhere?' she said, as we rounded Alexandria Square on two wheels. 'What's your name?'

'Sonya Moon,' I replied, hanging on to the window-frame.

'Moon... Moon... I say! Do you live Pangborne way?'

'Yes, I do.'

'I thought so. Wait a mo.' Pedestrians scuttled out of our way, encouraged by Mabel's vigorous use of the klaxon. 'You're not Geegee Moon's baby sister, are you?'

That was what they'd called Gerry at school. Gerald Gresham Moon. Geegee, see?

'Yes! Yes, I am. How did you know?'

'I was at the Goring Hunt Ball, two years ago, before the balloon went up. My brother Dick introduced us. He's rather a ripper, isn't he, your Geegee?' Mabel grinned broadly. 'Super dancer. Lovely legs. He _has_ joined up, hasn't he?'

'Yes. Navy, like Daddy.'

'Oooh!' Mabel swerved around a lamppost. 'I bet he's got a girl in every port! Do you hear from him?'

I gulped. 'I used to. Every week.'

'Used to. Oh God.' We bumped to a halt outside the station's main entrance. Mabel turned to face me. 'Oh God. Oh, you poor thing. You poor little thing. What happened? Do you want to tell me?'

'His ship went down. Off Heligoland. Thirteen months ago. HMS _Thaxted_. Oh, Mabel!' We embraced, while the injured soldiers filed unsteadily out of the back of the ambulance and formed up in a line, with their dog-daemons standing rigidly by their sides.

'I've got to go.' It was just coming up to five o'clock. 'I'll be late.' I jumped out of the cab. 'Thanks, Mabel. See you again!'

She called back. 'Number Twelve Ambulance Depot, in Mornington! Ask for Driver Patterson!' The ambulance huffed and puffed out of the yard, heading back to Paddington, I suppose. I staggered into the station concourse, still a little queasy after my fall and our breakneck journey through central London. Thank heavens - there was a group of Highdean girls standing next to Smith's, and a grown-up supervising them.

'Moon!' said Miss Alton, my housemistress. 'You are late!' The other girls giggled, but I didn't care. We'd show them!

* * *

_Author's note_

Sunny's Brytain uses traditional currency. There are four farthings (or two ha'pence) to a penny, twelve pennies to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound. Slang terms for common coins include _tanner_ (sixpenny piece), _bob_ (shilling) and _quid_ (pound).


	3. Highdean School

Highdean School

Love letters straight from the heart,  
Keep us so near while apart.

Edward Heyman & Victor Young

All us Gordon House girls grabbed a carriage to ourselves as soon as the special train the school had booked for us turned up - late - at Crècy. We glared out of the windows at anyone who tried to get into our special compartments and by the time the train finally left the station we were well and truly catching up with each other's holiday adventures. It helped the journey pass more quickly. The school bus was waiting under the awning at Tilling station and we all piled into it for the short ride to school.

We were expected to write home as soon as we arrived at Highdean. Why we had to write, why we couldn't just send an anbarogram, I couldn't make out. Oh well:

Dear Daddy,

Just a quick note to let you know I got here in one piece. The train was horrible. I'm so glad you were able to get me a reserved compartment all to myself. When I got to Paddington I had a terrible time finding a cab and when I did at last it was so expensive! Thirty bob! Miss Alton had to lend me the money when I got to Crècy.

I'll write again next Sunday as usual.

Love,

Sunny

I sealed up Daddy's letter, addressed it to "Rt Hon Sir Ronald Moon MP, KC" and put it to one side.

'I hope you're proud of yourself,' said Alfie, sitting on the desk preening himself.

'It _would_ have cost thirty bob, _if_ we'd gone by taxi. That's what Tanya said. That's what she had to pay.'

'But we didn't pay that.'

'We _would_ have, _if_ we'd taken a cab. Instead, we used our initiative and we deserve a reward for it. Thirty bob sounds about right to me.'

'We _didn't_ take a cab. Your _initiative_ nearly got us killed!'

Is _your_ daemon a pain in the neck too?

'Found any fleas yet, daemon?' Alfie scowled while I took out another sheet of writing paper:

Dear Aunt Sybil,

Thank you so much for looking after me during the holidays and for packing my trunk for me. I have arrived at school safely and am looking forward to getting really stuck in to my studies.

Love,

Sonya

I put Aunt Sybil's letter next to Daddy's. Things had come to a pretty pass when I had to write bread and butter letters to my own relatives, living in my own home. Oh well, job done. I sighed and dipped my pen in the inkwell. Now for the letter I really wanted to write. I relaxed and sat back in my chair:

Darling Gerry,

Well, here I am, back in good old Highdean in good old Tilling. The jolly old Pit. In one way it's horrible, it being school and all, but in another it's quite nice. For a start, I've got a study of my own at last. My very own room! I've put your picture on the mantelpiece, next to the watercolour you did of the house. There - that's a little bit of home for me, even though I'm stuck in the Pit.

Home is a pain without you there, Gerry. Aunt Sybil is still as stuck-up as ever. She orders me about all the time. I think she's trying to turn me into a lady. Daddy is nice. He's the same old Dad he always was. Busy, not at home all that much, staying up in Town all week, sitting on Committees and making speeches in the House. You know what the speeches are about, of course. I wish I was like you, fighting in the war instead of sitting here in the Pit. I want to do something - something that matters.

I know I must sound like a little kid to you, complaining like this. I imagine you're standing on the bridge of your ship in an icy gale doing real serious brave things while I'm learning stuff like Roman, Computation, Personal Theology (it's Advanced Personal Theology now I'm in the Sixth) and Domestic Administration (that's Cookery. I suppose you've got a Ship's Cook to look after you and all your men. Yo-ho-ho and all that). I thought it was going to be cushy in the Sixth, not being a Junior any more, but instead there're lots of new Duties I have to do. Something to do with Privilege bearing Responsibility in its Wake or some rubbish.

I met a friend of yours in London - Mabel Patterson. She says she met you at the Hunt Ball a year or two ago. Do you remember her? She's got curly red hair and she drives like a lunatic. (She's an ambulance driver now). I think she likes you. Perhaps you and she could meet up next time you get some leave. She's awfully nice, even though she scared me half to death with her weaving and bobbing.

Oh Gerry, we miss you so much, Alfie and me. How I wish this horrid war was over so we could all start living together again, just like it was when Mummy was still alive. Just you and me and Mummy and Daddy. No vile old Aunts hanging around spoiling things for everyone. No nasty Red Boxes for Daddy.

Don't pay any attention to me. I'm just a kid.

I'll write again soon. Love you forever,

Sunny

I sighed again, only more deeply than before, and put Gerry's letter down next to the other two. The last rays of the setting sun were tinting the walls of my little room a deep orange-red. I'd get some of my drawings and poems up on the walls soon and then the place wouldn't look so strange, so not mine. 'Come on,' said Alfie. 'It's tea-time. 'They'll be ringing the bell soon.'

'Very well,' I said in my best Aunt Sybil voice. 'Let us attend to our Duties.'

Our Duties. Yes. It seemed that the first Duty I had to perform was to coax the contents of E Study out of Gordon House and off to the Dining Hall. E Study, I should say, wasn't a private study like mine; it was a common room where the fourth-formers - disgusting little beasts, all of them - were kept until they were senior enough to get a place of their own.

I got up and, with Alfie trotting behind me, stomped out into the corridor and down to the common room. The scruffy little horrors who lived there were either sitting at the tables looking glum or rampaging around and shrieking at the tops of their foul voices. Their daemons were chirping and mewing and squeaking like feeding time at the zoo. I couldn't stand it, the noise.

'Shut up you brats!' I bellowed, and whacked the nearest tabletop hard with the flat of my hand. 'Teatime in two minutes. Put your things away in your lockers and line up by the door. Erica, sort that lot out, would you? Rachel, you put those books away. And listen!' I banged the table again. 'Any trouble and you're for it. Especially you, Charmaine. I've got my eye on you, so watch out! Do you want me to send for the Head of House? She'll sort you out.' There was an instant hush. You didn't want to get into trouble with Her, if you could possibly help it.

Promptly at six o'clock the bell rang and I shepherded my flock out of the door, past the tennis courts and the tuck shop and in through the oak doors of the Junior Dining Room. I got them all standing in more or less the right places and hissed at them to stop their idiotic chattering.

'You're enjoying all this,' said Alfie from his place on my left shoulder as we waited for the Head Girl to say Grace.

'No, I'm not.'

'Yes, you are.'

'Shut up, daemon.'

"The first objective of each and every member of the staff of Highdean School is to bring out the very best in every girl who is placed in our care."

So says the school prospectus. They had a real job on their hands when it came to bringing out the very best in me. I hadn't known I was such a rotten bully.

* * * *

The post was still running well, despite the War, so it was only two or three days later that I found an envelope waiting for me in my pigeon-hole by the front door of Gordon House. I recognised the handwriting straight away. There was no time to read it now - chapel - so I waited until later when the first lesson had got under way. It was Commercial Geography and Miss Froyle was well and truly going on the subject of Afric economics. She was droning on about diamond mines and flax exports and paying no attention to any of us, so I took out the envelope and carefully sliced it open with a nail file. There were two letters inside:

Dearest Sunny,

I'm so glad to hear that you got to Highdean without any problems. That is, apart from the appalling overcharging by the taxi-driver who took you from Paddington to Crècy. Thirty shillings fare! That's an absolute disgrace and I'm thinking of raising the matter in the House. I think, and the Party is behind me in this, that this kind of war profiteering has gone on for quite long enough. However, I know that politics doesn't interest you very much, does it, so I won't go on about it! I've enclosed a P.O. for two pounds to cover your extra expenses. Do remember to pay Miss Alton back and thank her from me for helping you out in a tight spot.

All my love,

Daddy

Dear Daddy. He was always so matter-of-fact in his letters. Hardly himself. Still, he'd come through with the money, and that was what was most important to me right now. Now for the other letter:

Dear Sonya,

It was with some relief that I read your letter. I trust that you mean it when you say that you will devote yourself whole-heartedly to your studies. Education, education, education! It is so important these days.

Love,

Aunt Sybil

I was fondly imagining what special torments I could devise for Aunt Sybil when my reverie was disturbed, not by Alfie who was usually pretty good at keeping a look-out for me, but by Miss Froyle.

'Moon!' A stick of chalk whistled past my head and smacked against the wall behind. 'The chief export of the Gold Coast is?'

I paused for effect. Then, in the sweetest voice I could manage I replied,' Bovine manure, Miss Froyle?'

* * * *

That half-term seemed to last for ever. It wasn't that I was bored - I was - or that there was lots of work to do - there was - or that I was collecting Demerit Marks faster than I ever had before, despite being in the Sixth. Nor was it the Duties I had to perform. They weren't so bad - mostly ordering the Juniors around. The Head of House had taken me aside for a walk by the greenhouses and given me a lecture about Establishing My Authority, just as if she was a grown-up. Poor thing! She was only two years older than me, but she acted as if she were middle-aged. She'd even had her hair cut short; not in a bob, which was a popular patriotic style, but in tight curls close to her scalp. She looked forty years old in her dowdy cardigan, droopy skirt and baggy-kneed stockings. Even her fox-daemon Paralinus looked elderly, with his white-haired snout and weary eyes.

Yes; I wore the same sludge-brown school uniform as her, but somehow it didn't look so bad on me. I'd let my hair grow so long that its dark curls were straightening out of their own accord. I liked to sit on the grass bank by the side of the Memorial Hall and let Alfie comb it out with his claws.

No, it was none of those things; not Duties, not Demerits, not itchy lisle stockings. What was depressing me so much was the sheer bloody pointlessness of it all.

* * * *

There were still two weeks to go until half-term. It was the end of another less-than-exciting day and I was lying in bed. Because I was a Senior I now had a cubicle to myself at one end of the dormitory. That was the good part. In return I was expected to make sure that the third-formers in the other beds behaved themselves. They didn't. Giggles from the far end, and the occasional sharp intake of breath, together with the flickering light of an oil-lamp told me that the urchins had got hold of what the Headmistress called "inappropriate literature", probably stolen from their parents' private libraries or Gordon House's unofficial stock of wrinkled and thumb-marked Yellow Books. Which one? I took a guess. Judging by the pitch of the voices, and the depth of the silences between the outbursts of laughter it was most likely that they were reading _The Travails of a Private Lady_ or, just possibly, _La Conte d'Y; _always supposing the little thickies could read Frankish, that is.

I'd had an idea for a story myself. No, not _that_ kind of story. It had come to me while I was on the train. I had seen a woman - her clothes made her look like a housewife out on a shopping trip - who had got a piece of grit in her eye. A man was helping her remove it. Perhaps he was a doctor. How would it be, I thought, if they met again, in town, and fell in love, even though both of them were married to other people? They have to meet somewhere away from home and they'd always be afraid of bumping into people they knew. It'd be sure to end badly.

Oh wait! Suppose that instead of having an affair in the town where they lived, they both travelled a lot by train. He could be a brush salesmen - an aristocrat fallen on hard times - and she could be, oh, I didn't know, a supply teacher or something. They'd never know when, at some junction or remote country station, they might not bump into one another. Their meetings would be rare, and random, and oh, so sweet! I flicked on the light, took out my notepad from the side of my bed, and started to write:

The weather was sunny and bright with a soft south-westerly wind. The clock was standing at a quarter to three when Alex Lyons; tall, debonair, but with an air of lost wealth about him, stepped out onto the platform of Wulfrun station. He carefully lit a casual cigarillo and stood under a yellow lamp-standard, looking about him warily. Would she be there - his Lara? It had been ages - nearly three weeks - since they had last met, at a pretty little halt in Staffordshire and consummated their physical passion in the waiting-room, unbeknownst to the station master and porter sitting in their little cubby-holes just the other side of the paper-thin wall that was covered in big posters for Devon and the Kernow Riviera. Would this be the very day they would meet again? Would she be as lovely as the first day he had seen her, dabbing at her eyes under just this very same old clock? He heaved a deep, heartfelt, sigh, and his gorgeous otter-daemon Dorothy sighed deeply with him…

I wrote for hours, while the kids crept back to their beds and fell asleep, one by one.

* * * *

Only one week to go until half-term! And suddenly I didn't want to go home any more. A bombshell had landed and its explosion had left me in pieces. I sat in the window of my study with tears in my eyes and wrote a letter to my far, far-away brother:

Darling Gerry,

I don't know if I can stand it much longer. Look at this letter Dad's sent me. Look! I've copied out the bit that matters:

Now, Sunny, I've come to the part of this letter that I'm not looking forward to writing. You must know how I've been feeling about Gerry going to sea while I've been sitting comfortably in the House, or at home. You know that I was a sailor myself, back in the old days. All the time this dreadful War has been dragging on I've felt torn apart. Half of me wants to go back to sea and command a ship again. The other half knows that he can serve his country perfectly well here in Blighty, by making sure that the King's Government make wise decisions. So far, the second half has always won.

Did you know that I've asked the P.M. several times if I can leave the Front Bench and join up, and that he's always refused to accept my resignation? Well, now there's no choice in the matter. They have decided to recall the Naval Reserve; and that means that everyone who's served in the Navy in the last fifteen years has to rejoin. I know that I could dodge this if I wanted to. They'd find some way to get me out of it, I'm sure, but I don't want to get out of it. Do you understand? For Gerry's sake, and the country's, I'm going to go back to my old ship. I owe it to everyone, especially myself.

I'm sorry, Sunny. I know that you were looking forward to us being together at half-term and that isn't going to happen now. Please try to get on with Aunt Sybil, both for my sake and for your mother's. This is a demanding time for us all, and we must try to make the best of things.

I shall be in Pompey by the time you read this, taking command of my ship. Wish me luck!

Oh Gerry, I knew it! I knew it! It was the way he always kept that photogram of HMS Undaunted_ on his desk next to Mummy's picture, the way he looked at you when you left the house in your new lieutenant's uniform. I could tell what he wanted to do. I knew how much he hated being an MP and a Government Minister. Now he's gone, and I'm going to lose him too, the same way I lost you._

I feel absolutely foul. I feel desperate. I want to kill myself.

'Don't say that,' said Alfie, nuzzling my cheek with his nose. It was late afternoon in my study, with an hour to go until teatime. I was sitting at my desk, looking out of the window. Bright September had turned to rainy October. The leaves were turning and falling fast, laying crackling carpets of brown debris along the pathways and avenues of the school grounds. _The aging of the year_, someone had written. Aging and dying. 'Please, please don't talk about dying,' Alfie said. His eyes were every bit as moist as mine.

I couldn't face a whole week at home alone with Aunt Sybil. I had to _do_ something about it or I would burst.

* * * *

'Ceely!' We were standing outside the Music School.

'Sunny! So you _are_ talking to me. I thought you'd given up talking to people.'

'I'm sorry, Ceely, I know I've been a terrible bore all term. Hiding in my study, and all.'

'You certainly have. Here, can you hold this for me for a mo?' Cecilia passed me her satchel. It was heavy - packed full of textbooks and exercise books, just as mine was. I staggered under the combined weight of her satchel and mine. Cecilia reached into her blazer pocket and took out a bar of chocolatl. She broke it down the middle and offered me half.

Good sort, Cecilia. She'd do nicely for what I had in mind.

'Ceely, do you think you could do me the most enormous favour?' I talked, Cecilia listened and her eyes grew wide, first with shock and then with amusement.

'Gosh, Sunny! What a tremendous jape!'

* * * *

Dear Aunt Sybil,

Just a short note to let you know that Cecilia Armitage - do you remember her, she came to stay last summer - has asked me if I'd like to go to Cambria with her for the half-term next week. Her people have a grouse moor up there and it sounds such fun that I've already said yes. We'll go up there by train and motor-car. I can borrow C's spare Barbour and leggings, she says, and they'll show me how to use a real shotgun! Her father is General Armitage, by the way. We know the Armitages, don't we?

I'll write to you when I get there. It'll be ripping fun, and such an adventure!

Lots of love,

Sonya

Right. Now we were set. Now we could get away at last.


	4. The Streets of London

_The Streets of London_

_Two drifters, off to see the world,  
There's such a lot of world to see._

Johnny Mercer

Cecilia Armitage and her Horatio sat next to me on the train. She was bouncing with excitement and Horatio's feathers were all a-twitch. In fact she was so wound up that I was beginning to wonder if I should have told her my plan.

I hadn't told her all of it. I wasn't quite as silly as that. What Cecilia thought was that I had met a boy in the summer holidays. Darren, I called him, and his shrew-daemon's name was Maura. Cecilia's eyes glowed as I described his handsome face, his long brown wavy hair, the special way he had with animals, his soft lilting voice and his knowing hands. In fact, after half an hour of this kind of talk I was quite fancying him myself.

'Ooh, Sunny!' Cecilia gasped at intervals. Meanwhile, I was making notes in my head. I could just see Darren taking a leading role in my next story.

It was a fine Saturday morning, and we had a whole week off for half-term. Cecilia and I had bagged a compartment to ourselves in the green Southern Railways train that was taking us up to London. A porter had put our cases on the racks overhead and touched the peak of his cap respectfully. Ceely had given him sixpence for his trouble. I had given him nothing. I couldn't spare any money, not yet. I didn't know how long the four pounds, six and sevenpence-halfpenny in my purse would have to last me.

'And so,' Cecilia giggled, 'your people think you're going to Argyll with me, when really you're going to be in Lowestoft with Darren. Aren't you afraid that you'll... get, you know? Preggers?'

'Oh no,' I said airily. 'We'll take precautions. Darren knows all about that. After all...'

'Yes?'

'They worked before.'

'Ooh, Sunny!'

Good grief. When would this girl stop giggling?

'Now, Ceely, don't forget. I've given you two letters to post. Send one off as soon as you get to Glen Bruce. That'll tell Aunt Sybil I've arrived safely. Send the other one Wednesday afternoon. It's full of stuff about the moors, and shooting and riding. She'll read them and think I'm romping around in Scotland with you.'

'While all the time...'

'Yes!' I grinned. 'Ooh, Ceely! I can't wait!'

We parted at Crècy station. Cecilia headed for the taxi rank while I pretended to be waiting for Darren who, I'd said, would be wearing grey flannels, a brown tweed jacket and a green tie. Aunt Sybil's last letter was still in my blazer pocket. It read:

_Dear Sonya,_

I must say that I am deeply disappointed that you will not be coming home for the half-term. There are many things that we have to discuss - serious things to do with your future. You should not have accepted the Armitages' kind invitation without consulting me first. While your father is at sea, I am your legal guardian and responsible for your safety and welfare.

I shall write to your Housemistress expressing my disapproval of your actions and I should not be at all surprised if you were not deprived of some of your Sixth Form privileges as a result.

Aunt Sybil

'Well, stuff you,' I said, and threw the letter into the nearest bin.

The first thing to do was to change into civvies. No, the first thing to do was to _buy_ some civvies. None of the things I wore at school looked like anything but schoolgirl clothes, and a schoolgirl was the last thing I wanted to look like. So I picked up my case - it was packed with pyjamas and spare socks and underthings - and, with Alfie tucked safely into my left-hand blazer pocket, strode out of the station and into the street outside.

I didn't know London very well and, to make it worse, the place had changed since the War began. Because of the Zepp raids all the windows had had to be taped up and blacked out at night, so the shops looked strange, with rolls of dark curtains hanging by the sides of the displays ready to be drawn at closing time. I shuddered, although the weather was warm for October. Didn't they pull black curtains across the windows of a house when someone had died there?

We walked north and west, towards the centre of Town. I was looking for Mitchell's Outfitters, where my school clothes had come from. I had the idea that we might have an account there, so I could buy some new clothes without spending any of my precious and limited stock of cash. I'd emptied my School Bank account the day before and I had no chance of getting any more money until I had put my Grand Plan into action.

After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and getting lost and asking a constable the way we found Mitchell's. It was the kind of clothes shop that specialised in practical, hard-wearing things - the kind of shop that Aunt Sybil approved of. I wasn't sure that I'd be able to find anything there that I could bear to be seen in, but after a lot of searching I managed to track down a not-too-bad jacket and a couple of winter blouses together with a really-not-bad-at-all navy blue pencil skirt that made me feel pretty good, despite its being made of heavy woollen serge. The assistant piled the stuff on the counter and, taking a stylus from a little pocket in her tunic, worked out the total amount.

'That'll be thirty-five pounds, six and eleven, please,' she said, looking at me expectantly and holding out her hand.

I tried to sound casual, although my heart was thumping in my chest and Alfie was twitching uncomfortably in my pocket. 'Charge it to my account,' I said.

'Certainly, Miss. Name of?'

'Moon,' I said.

'Address?'

'The Stocks, near Goring, Oxfordshire.'

'Just a moment, please.' The assistant reached under the counter for a ledger, lifted it onto the top and flipped open its pages. 'Ah yes. Captain Sir Ronald Moon?'

'Yes, he's my father.'

'Good. Yes, that's quite satisfactory. Do you have a carnet?'

'I'm sorry?'

'A carnet. An identification card.'

'No.' Why would I have an identification card? I thought they were only for grown-ups.

'I'm sorry, Miss, but we need to be sure that you are who you say you are. Sir Ronald is quite a well-known person. Do you understand?'

Oh hell. Yes, I understood very well. They couldn't let just anybody stroll up to the counter, claim they were Captain Moon's daughter, and walk off with thirty-five pounds' worth of goods on account.

'I'm sorry, no.'

'Other forms of identification may also be acceptable, Miss. Do you, perhaps, have a letter with you? A letter from home?'

Yes, it was in a rubbish bin at Crècy station. A fat lot of use that was to me now. I shook my head. Suddenly the clothes were no longer on top of the counter but behind it, out of our reach.

'We could send an anbarogram to your home and ask them to confirm your identity. Let's see,' she referred to her ledger, 'the anbarographic address is _Undaunted, Aldbrickham._ Would you like me to do that for you? You could pop back later to collect your purchases or wait here for the answer.'

'No. No, thank you. I'll leave it for now.'

I turned and walked out of the shop. I could feel the assistant's eyes watching my every step. _Thief, thief_, she'd be thinking. She'd tell her supervisor about me and probably be given a pat on the back, or even a bonus. 'Keep going,' said Alfie, as the street door swung back behind us. 'Don't let them see which way we go. Don't turn round.'

That wasn't very likely. My face was blazing hot; burning with frustration and shame. I walked as fast as I could in the direction of the river and Alfie... Alfie simply _flew_.

We sat on a bench near the Embankment. It was a relief to get away from the crowded streets and Alfie and I needed to catch our breath.

'I have never felt so bloody humiliated!'

'We weren't very clever, were we? If we'd been paying attention last time we were there we'd have known that Mitchell's would be awkward.'

'So we would. Look, Alfie, we've got to pull ourselves together. And - I've absolutely got to get out of these frightful clothes!'

A constable walked in front of our bench, whistling a marching tune and giving us a curious glance. It was the second time he'd passed us and it looked as if we were attracting his interest. Soon he'd be back and asking us what we were doing, and where my parents were. After that, we'd be hauled off to the police station and have to answer some awkward questions. It was time to move on.

'Come along, Sir Alpharintus.' Alfie grabbed hold of my sleeve with his sharp little claws and I got up to leave.

'That's another thing,' said Alfie. 'Let's stop sounding so bloody posh, shall we?'

We turned away from the river and made our way back into the busy streets of London. I knew - because I'd checked it on the map at school - that the place we wanted to get to was somewhere not too far north of Eversholt station. I was feeling quite hungry as it had been several hours since breakfast so, seeing a roast-chestnut stall by the side of the road I spent sixpence on a bag of cobs and another threepence on a cup of tea. I had an idea.

''Scuse me, mate,' I said to the man behind the stall, as he piled more nuts onto the griddle.

'Yes, love?'

'There ain't nowhere nearby where I could get some new clothes cheap, is there?'

'Clothes? What clothes?'

'You know. Like, normal clothes. Like she's wearing. Make me look like her.' I pointed out a girl - a pretty girl wearing a nice coat and dress - standing by the door of a public house opposite. The chestnut man looked at me and laughed.

'Jessie? You want to look like Jessie?' He rubbed his hands on his apron. 'Hey George!'

Another man appeared from behind the stall. 'Eddie?'

'Party here wants to look like our Jessie!'

Eddie looked at me and his face split in a broad grin. 'She could too, if she wanted. Here, Jessie! Jessie!' he shouted. His voice cut through the noise of the passing 'buses and lorries and roused the girl. She looked up. 'Yeah?' she called back.

'Party here wants to look like you!'

'What?' The girl crossed the road, ignoring the traffic, and walked right up to me. She stared at me - straight into my eyes.

'Go home, sweetie.' She spat onto the pavement. 'Go home, you silly little trollop, before you _do_ end up looking like me.'

'How rude!' said Alfie. The girl's mouse-daemon screwed his face up in annoyance. Now that Jessie was standing right next to me I could see that her face was painted with rouge and her fading hair was dyed. Her clothes, which had looked stylish and expensive from a distance, were made of cheap stuff - coal-silk velvet and artificial fur. She smelled like our housemaids used to; of gin and sweat, and her stockings had been darned many times over.

'Go on! Go home,' Jessie said, and turned her back on me. She crossed back to the Prescott Arms and took up her old position against the doorpost.

'The sailors love our Jessie,' said Eddie. 'She knows what they like, if you see what I mean.' I thought I saw what he meant, but I didn't want to think about it. 'Look, love, if you want to buy some clothes, why don't you go to the market?'

'The market? Where's that?'

'Dean Street. Go over there past the pub, then it's half a mile down the Charing Cross Road. You can't miss it.'

'Thanks, mate.' I handed my teacup back to Eddie and set off in the direction he'd pointed. I passed Jessie, but she paid me no attention. A group of soldiers - out on a weekend's leave, I suppose - were approaching and she was watching them, not me.

I loved the market. It wasn't quite the same as I was used to at home - it was strung out along the pavement instead of being set in a square - but it was lively and colourful and the stallholders were friendly. Thirty bob bought me a winter skirt and a short jacket. Another one and sixpence for a nice pink headscarf and I was all set. I slipped into the ladies' privy in a nearby branch of Warings and changed, cramming my Highdean things into my case. 'They'll crease,' said Alfie.

'I don't care,' I replied. I checked myself in the glass, retied the headscarf so my hair looked right, and sauntered out of the swing doors. What a relief! Now I was just another girl out on the streets of London. Prettier than most, but what was wrong with that? I strolled happily up Charing Cross Road and down into the Chthonic station. Three or four stops to my destination. I paid for my ticket - it was only twopence - and took the lift down to the platform.

'This time...' said Alfie, as we waited for the train.

'Yes?' I beamed at him.

'No stupid stunts! You behave yourself!'

'Of course I will.' Of course I did. The train rattled in and we got on board, along with a crowd of Saturday afternoon shoppers. I preferred hanging on to the straps to sitting down, so I wedged myself against the side of the carriage and let the train push me around as it twisted its way through the tunnels. The walls were plastered with advertisements: for Fluorodyne Mixture and War Loans and a new play at the Haymarket Theatre. There was another poster of a different kind, printed in bright red ink. It read:

**_TO THE YOUNG WOMEN OF LONDON_**

Is your Best Boy in _Khaki_? Don't you think he _should_ be?

If he will not answer the _Nation's Call_, can he possibly be worthy of _You_?

If he will not defend his _Country_, will he defend _You_?

If he has no _Honour_, will he honour _You_?

If he will not rally to the _Colours_, what _Colour_ should he wear? Should it not be _White,_ the _Pale Banner_ of_Cowardice_?

Think about it: then tell him to:

**JOIN THE ARMY TODAY!**

I loved it! It was so true! So right! If my brother could get into uniform and go to sea to save us from the Heathen Horde (and not come back), why couldn't they? If my father could rejoin his ship, even though he didn't have to, why couldn't they? I looked around the carriage, seeking out the slackers. I'd show 'em. Gosh, I almost got off the train at Eversholt and joined the White Handkerchief League on the spot. Their address was at the bottom of the poster. I could have, but that wouldn't have been enough. I was going to do so much more than that.

The Chthonic station at Mornington Crescent had a lift, but I was so eager I couldn't bear to wait for it. I ran up the spiral staircase and out of the gates into the street outside. There I stood on the pavement, got my breath back and looked around. There were fewer shops here than in the part of Town I'd just left and more houses. Big, tall houses with wide doorways and narrow steps down to the area basements where the kitchens and the servants were.

It wasn't a house I was looking for. I stopped a woman who was pushing a pram down the road. 'Hello', I said. 'Are you going to the park?'

'Yes, I am. Are you going that way too?' She looked friendly, so we walked along together.

'Is he yours?' I pointed to the baby. All you could see of him (or her) was a pink face and a bump under the blanket that must have been her (or his) daemon.

'Oh no! That's Master Nicolas.' Of course - she was a nanny. Not a born Londoner, either, by the sound of her voice.

'He's a nice baby.'

'He's a quiet baby, and that's what matters.' The nanny's terrier-daemon nodded his head. I laughed.

'Will we be going anywhere near the ambulance depot, by the way?'

'The ambulance depot? Oh no! That's over there.' She pointed eastwards. 'Is that where you want to go?'

'Yes. I'm meeting my friend Mabel Patterson. Do you know her?'

'Oh no! I don't know anybody there. Rowdy place. Comings and goings all time of the day and night. Nice girl like you doesn't want to go there. A rough lot, if you ask me.'

'You don't like them?'

'Oh no!' Right. That was good enough for me.

I left Master Nicolas and his nurse behind and crossed the road. It was peaceful after the rush of Dean Street. I liked that. It was a relief - I was starting to feel tired. My case was getting heavier and heavier, so I sat down on a low garden wall to give my sore shoulders a rest. Alfie lay in my lap and looked up at me.

'This is what we want to do, isn't it?' he said.

'Of course it is!' I looked into his eyes. 'Look, we can't go back to Goring. Not now!'

'But it's our home.'

'Not with Her running things, it isn't. Come on. It's not far now. Do you want to carry the case for me?'

'Don't be daft!'

'Sorry.' I stood up and we set off again.

You couldn't miss the depot. It must have been a small manufactory or an autobus garage before the War for it had an open yard which you reached through a pair of tall wooden gates and behind it there was a two-storey brick building with a tin roof. White-painted vehicles were continuously entering and leaving the yard and honking their horns, and the air was hazy with their fumes. It looked dangerously busy. Alfie looked one way, I looked the other and together we crossed the yard and went into the building by a battered metal door. Inside was a cramped office containing a row of grey metal filing cabinets and a desk with a uniformed middle-aged lady sitting behind it, her lark-daemon perched on her left shoulder.

'Excuse me, Goodwife,' I said, putting down my case. 'This is number twelve ambulance depot, isn't it?'

The woman looked up from the form she was filling in.

'Yes, young lady, it is. What do you want?'

'I'm looking for Driver Patterson. Mabel.'

'Why?'

I was nonplussed for a moment. Why shouldn't I be looking for Driver Patterson?

'Because... Because she said I could find her here.'

'I see.' The lark-daemon pecked at his wings with his sharp little beak, tidying them.

'Right. Just a minute.' The woman rotated her swivel chair and looked at a chart on the wall behind her. 'You're in luck. She's off duty. You'll find her in the rec room. Out of the door, turn right and up the stairs. Watch out for the traffic.'

'Thank you, Goodwife,' I said, but she had already returned to her paperwork.

Round by the side of the building I found an outside stairway. I climbed it - really feeling the weight of my case now - and pushed open the door at the top. It opened into a room whose walls were painted a dingy beige. Around the walls were a collection of posters - some crumpled and old, some bright and new - of kinema stars and popular singers and bands. In the far corner a huge mahogany wireless set was blasting dance music at full volume and lining the walls were old chairs and sofas, covered in stained fabric or greasy naugahyde.

A number of young women were sitting, or lying, or sleeping, on the sofas. Their faces told me all I needed to know about them - they were dog-tired, worn-out, exhausted. Their daemons lay or slept or sat next to them. Some of them were still awake beside their sleeping partners, looking out for them.

'Mabel?' I said, not wanting to speak so loud that I'd wake the sleepers, but still needing to make myself heard over the wireless. 'Mabel? Mabel Patterson?'

A face looked up. 'Yes?' I recognised Mabel's auburn locks and her chaffinch-daemon Hal, so I crossed the room and crouched on the floor next to them.

'Mabel, it's me. Sunny. Sunny Moon. You remember, at Paddington Chthonic. I fainted. You drove me to Crècy station.'

Mabel shook her head, to clear it, I suppose. 'Did I? Oh, wait a mo. Sunny Moon? Geegee's little sis?'

'That's me. You said I could come round and see you.'

'Did I? Oh yes, I suppose I did. Only, you see, I'm rather whacked at the moment. Why don't you come back in, oh, two or three years or so when this bloody War is over.'

'No! No! I can't do that!' I felt like bursting into tears. 'No!'

'Why not?' Mabel sat up. 'What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at home?'

'I'm not going home. I'm beggared if I'm going home! I'm staying here with you. I want to join up. I want to be an ambulance driver like you. I want to stop being so bloody useless and do something important like you do. I want to help. I can't help when I'm stuck in a stupid classroom, learning rubbish like Roman verbs and Frankish nouns and doing bloody stinking stupid deportment exercises! They want to make me a lady. I don't want to be a lady! I want to do something worthwhile. Oh Mabel, won't you help me join up?'

The other girls in the room were looking at us now, disturbed by the pitch of my voice. Alfie stared back at them. He looked as desperate as I felt, with his fur - his silky-soft fur - ruffled and his eyes bulging half out of their sockets.

'Calm down, won't you?' said Mabel. 'Join up? You can't join up, you imbecile! You're only a baby. How old are you?'

I knew the right answer to that one. Gerry had told me what age you had to be to enlist. 'I'm nineteen.'

'You are nowhere near nineteen!'

'I am. I was nineteen last June. You can't prove I'm not.'

Mabel and Hal looked into each other's eyes while Alfie snuggled into the crook of my elbow.

'Look,' I said. 'I can tell you need help. Why not give me a try?'

She thought for a moment. 'We _are_ working double shifts... Can you drive?'

'Of course I can,' I lied.

'And you really mean it? You really want to join the Ambulance Service?'

'Yes I do.'

'All right.' Mabel stood up slowly. 'I'll take you downstairs to see the boss. Only; you'd better mean it. You'd better not let us down, or we'll make you sorry you ever came here.

'Actually,' Mabel gave me a weary smile as we walked down the stairs, 'after a week of this place you'll be sorry anyway. Welcome to the madhouse!'


	5. Mornington

_Mornington_

_... that Monarch of the Road,   
Observer of the Highway Code._

Michael Flanders and Donald Swann

They gave me the bed next to Mabel's. Yes, I might have left school, I might be a Driver (Third Class) in the Ambulance Brigade, but I still had to sleep in a dormitory. I got a shelf in a cupboard to put my bits and pieces on and a rail to hang up my clothes. It was like being a third-former all over again.

To be fair, Captain Lowther had made it perfectly clear to me where my place was in the order of things. Mabel took me to her office; the room with all the filing cabinets. She saluted and stood to attention. I gulped and did my best to copy her. I was completely taken aback. How could I have known that the woman I had asked for directions only a few minutes before was the officer in charge? I'd supposed she was a clerk. She looked up from the sheaf of papers she was studying.

'Who's this?' she asked Mabel, just as if she'd never seen me before.

Mabel told the Captain that I was an old friend who wanted to join the Service, that I was the right sort, that I was an ace driver and that she'd vouch for my good character. I smiled, glowing inside. Good old Mabel!

Captain's Lowther's Deuteronomy gave Alfie and me the once-over. Then he gave Alfie the once-over all over again. He knew all about him straightaway, I could tell. I wondered what the Captain would say about him.

She said nothing about him. Good. Instead she told Mabel to take me to the stores and get me kitted up. Mabel saluted her again - there was going to be a lot of this kind of thing, I could tell - and turned smartly on her heel. I followed her out of Captain Lowther's office. She ignored us - she had already returned to her paperwork.

'What's she like, then, Captain Lowther?' I asked Mabel as we passed the garage on the way to the stores.

'Like? She's like she is.'

'What d'you mean?'

Mabel stopped and turned to look at me. 'Isn't it obvious? She's tough. She expects everything you can give, and more. She never stops working. She never gives up. She'd die for us if she had to. She doesn't ask stupid questions.'

'Oh.'

'Look, Sunny. It's not too late. We can go back and tell the boss you've changed your mind. I'll look like an idiot, but so what?' Mabel grabbed me by both shoulders and her Hal stared at me. 'We're not playing games here. Do you get it?'

'Yes, Mabel. I get it.' I wasn't going to back out now. Mabel opened the door to the stores with the key Captain Lowther had given her.

I had to sign for my uniform. Two tunics, one pair of boots, three pairs of socks, a cap with a brass badge that I was expected to keep well polished, a belt made of canvas webbing and two pairs of trousers.

'No underwear?' I asked. I'd thought they'd provide everything I needed.

'Counts as personal items,' said Mabel. 'Get them from the shops, or wherever you found that rig-out you're wearing. Come on, now. I'll show you where you're bunking. You can get changed. Then we'll see how well you can drive.'

There were some letters I had to write if alarm bells weren't to start ringing all over southern England. I had to do something to cover my tracks. I found the time somehow. It wasn't easy.

_Dear Mrs Frame,_

_Could you do me the most enormous favour and post the enclosed letter for me? I promise you it's nothing wrong._

_Love, Sunny_

_Dear Miss Selborne,_

_It is with regret that I must inform you that I have decided, with Captain Moon's full support, to withdraw Sonya from Highdean School with immediate effect._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Sybil Gresham_

_Dear Cecilia,_

_Could you do me the most enormous favour and post the enclosed letter for me? I promise you it's nothing wrong. Ooooh, Darren and me are having the most wonderful time! I never want it to end!_

_Love, Sunny_

_Dear Aunt Sybil,_

_Here I am, back at good old Highers! Glen Bruce was smashing! I do so hope you got my postcards._

_Love, Sonya_

_My only Gerry,_

_I've done it! I've escaped! I'm free at last!_

_And I wouldn't be here now if it weren't for you. I'd never have had the nerve to run away from school, and I'd never have been able to drive if you hadn't shown me how._

_Mabel took me out into the yard the day after I arrived. I was wearing my full uniform for the first time. It did feel funny, wearing trousers. I suppose you're used to it. Anyway, there was an ambulance standing there that she'd already got out of the garage. It's made by Dennis, the same people as make the fire engines, Mabel told me, so it's probably like the ones they use to put out the rick fires last year. Luckily the engine was already running so I didn't have to start it on the handle. 'Off you go, then,' said Mabel, so I climbed into the driver's seat. I looked around for the controls and I nearly died. They were all in different places from where you showed me on Daddy's Ridgeworth. The brake was on the right pedal and the clutch was on top of the tiller. The injector pump was hanging off the dashboard. I though they were all automatic these days._

_Mabel grinned at me. 'Let's see you cross the yard,' she said. 'Gently, now.' I poked around a bit - I nearly stalled it - and somehow, I don't know how, I managed to lurch over to the other side and stop without hitting the wall too hard. Mabel ran after me. 'I thought you said you could drive,' she said._

_'So I can,' I told her. 'Normal cars, anyway. When was this thing made? Before the Flood?'_

_'It's GFE,' she said. 'Government Furnished Equipment. Built to the highest possible standards.'_

_'When? When was it built?'_

_'I don't know. Within our lifetimes, I expect. Now, shove over!' I took the passenger seat and Mabel drove us out of the depot and up the Great North Road until we were well past Barnet. I noticed that both Hal and Alfie sat on the top of the dashboard and kept a good look-out to the front. Just as well, the speed Mabel drove at. We bumped off the road, though the remains of a pair of iron gates and onto a wide flat area, like a sports field with the goal posts missing and a rusty steel tower put in its place. You'd have recognised it right away, Gerry. It was an abandoned Zeppelin station, Mabel said, just before she handed the controls back to me._

_Stars above, but I was mortified! Mabel soon realised how little driving I'd actually done. I thought she was going to drive off and leave me and Alfie out there in the middle of Hertfordshire to walk home by ourselves. She taught me lots of new words I 'd never heard before - no, not swearing; she doesn't swear at all, these were technical things - but she also showed me how to make an Ambulance, Dennis, Mk V do more or less what I wanted it to._

_'Sonya Moon,' she said, as we drove back into London, me at the tiller and Mabel's hand hovering over the running-brake. 'You are a fraud.'_

_'What?' I asked, still worried that she'd have me sent back to Highdean._

_'You're the biggest fraud I know. Before, I 'd have said you were just a silly little schoolgirl on the runaway. Now I know better. You're a total nutcase!'_

_'Gosh, thanks.'_

_Mabel pushed a stray auburn lock back into place. The wind had caught it. 'Slow at this junction,' was all she said._

_That's about it for now, Gerry, except to say that when we got back to Mornington the Captain was waiting for us. We stopped the ambulance, jumped out and stood to attention beside it, while she walked slowly around us, doing an inspection. 'Moon!' she said suddenly. I jumped._

_'Yes, Ma'am?'_

_'Are you in pain?'_

_'No, Ma'am.'_

_'Well you should be. I'm standing on your hair! Get it cut or put it up, I don't care which. I don't want to see it again. Do you understand?'_

_'Yes, Ma'am.'_

_She had a moan about some mud-splashes on the ambulance wheels and marched back into her office. Mabel fetched a couple of rags and we polished up the spokes. 'What was that all about?' I asked her._

_'Long hair is unhygienic and it can get caught up in the machinery. It's up to you, what you do about it. Lots of the girls have had theirs bobbed.'_

_'I can't do that!' I protested._

_'Yes you can, if you're serious about all this.' Mabel's face was stern._

_'Sorry.'_

_'Or you can keep it in a snood, or tie it up in a bun. It's lovely hair, yours. I can see why you don't want to cut it short. And cheer up! This is what you want to do, isn't it?'_

_'Yes,' I said, ' this is exactly what I want to do.' And it is._

_I'll write to you again soon._

_All my love,_

_Sunny_

That first month in Mornington was sheer murder. It had its good parts, else I think I'd have thrown it all in and run home to Auntie. But I had never known I could feel so tired. I fell into my bunk when my shift was over, whether it was at nine o'clock at night or the middle of the day and simply passed out. Sometimes I forgot to eat, or there was nothing to eat, and I went to bed hungry. I'd never done that before in my whole life. I'd never been hungry - not really hungry, so it felt like there was something clawing at my insides.

For the first three weeks they didn't let me out on my own. I wasn't safe. Instead, I rode shotgun, as they called it, with one of the more experienced drivers, like Mavis Pearce or Nancy Avon. It was my job to help get the wounded men in and out of the ambulance and to clean it up afterwards, while the drivers ate. I only got something to eat when the vehicle was all spick and span.

If I hadn't been so shattered with tiredness I'd have had nightmares every time I closed my eyes.

It was the patients; the men. It wasn't that they had their limbs torn off, or that their faces were gaunt and ingrained with battlefield mud. It wasn't the way their hands shook, and their voices stammered. It wasn't even the spastic twitching of their heads or the horrible sounds some of them made in their throats and the way they tore at their hair.

All those things were horrifying and frightening enough. I think I'd known that I'd have to face some terrible sights and hear some awful sounds in my new work. I can admit it now; my insides were all knotted up with fear the first time I went out on a job. I sat in the privy with my stomach churning for half an hour before we set out, not daring to move, afraid that I would mess myself. Would I be able to face it? Would I have the guts to see it through? Or would I disgrace myself; fall into a silly faint, or throw up all over the place?

Mabel told me all about it, the first night. 'It's ghastly, quite a lot of the time,' she said. 'Perfectly ghastly. It tears you up. But Sunny, you don't know what you can do until you do it. None of us do, until we have to. You'll be all right. Promise you.' She hugged me and gave me a peck on the cheek.

Alfie and I _were_ all right in the end, but it was a near thing.

It was their daemons. That's what it was. They were alive but dead, their eyes vacant, their gaze focused who knows where. It was if they were no longer part of their people any more. They were empty shells. They had been blasted apart by the sheer horror of what they had seen and done. Many of them of them would never be whole again.

Alfie felt it more than me. We would lie in our bunk at night, holding each other and being _special_ together, and talk about what we had seen that day. 'They were parted,' he'd say, over and over again. 'It's unbearable.'

'But we'll bear it, won't we?' I'd reply.

'Somehow, yes. We'll bear it.' And then sleep would swallow us up and we would be able to forget the pain for a while.

Sometime towards the end of that first month it was as if something clicked inside my head; as if someone had thrown an anbaric switch and turned the fear off. Mabel had told me about that, too. 'You've got to stop taking it personally or you'll go round the twist,' she told me one night as we turned in. 'They're in pain, but you can't make it any easier for them by hurting yourself. You can't take their pain away from them. Only God or the doctors can do that.'

'I know.' I sighed, and Alfie wrapped his tail around my forearm.

The place needed livening up, I decided, so I started a card school. We played poker for matches. I got a loudspeaker set up in the yard and piped the wireless into it. That upset the neighbours, but so what? They weren't working all hours, were they? And I suggested we go out to the pub when it was quiet. That was fine, so long as we all went together. They'd throw you out if there were only one or two of you, even if you were in uniform. They didn't want to get a bad reputation, the landlord said. Couldn't take the risk that their grimy little alehouse would get mixed up with a brothel, I suppose.

I even got one or two of us to go fire-watching, or putting up posters. You see, they'd taken a photogram of me when I joined, and I thought it came out pretty well, so I said to the Captain one day when she seemed to be in a good mood that we should print some posters with my face on them to encourage other girls to join up. I was thinking of the poster I'd seen in the Chthonic train that very first day.

'Look, Ma'am,' I said, and I showed her what I'd written:

**CALLING ALL PATRIOTIC GIRLS**

DID YOU KNOW that whenever a _Woman_ shoulders a _Man's_ burden   
it _Frees_ him for the _Service_ of the _Crown_?

**JOIN THE AMBULANCE BRIGADE NOW**

and send another _HERO_ to the _Front_   
for _God_, _King_ and _Country_.

Underneath it I'd stuck my photo. 'We could get that turned into a drawing,' I suggested, 'and put your name at the bottom. Get it printed it up in red and black and post it all over London.'

'Do you seriously suppose,' said the Captain, ' that having your face plastered all over the walls is going to help our recruitment efforts?'

I gave her my most winning smile. 'Certainly, Ma'am!'

Captain Lowther shook her head and her stiff, iron-grey fringe moved with it. 'If I had known, Driver Moon, what I was letting myself in for when I signed you up... Oh, very well!'

So I did, and soon my face, nicely done in pastels by an old art teacher - too old to serve, I made sure of that - who lived nearby, was beaming at the passers-by along the thoroughfares of the city. I made sure that there were a couple of spare posters tucked behind the seats of every ambulance that went out and I got the drivers to promise they'd stick them up whenever they had a spare moment.

I wasn't so stupid as to think I wouldn't get found out sooner or later. The end of term was fast approaching. Not only were most of my possessions still at Highdean School awaiting collection, but also there was the problem of Aunt Sybil. I had continued to send Cecilia a supply of letters to forward to my aged relative, but I could hardly rely on her for ever. Nor could I pretend that I was going to spend the holidays with yet another classmate. I suppose I was hoping that Aunt Sybil would be so relieved at not having to put up with any more of what she called my "adolescent tantrums" she wouldn't try very hard to find me.

Let's face it, with my picture decorating the highways and byways of the metropolis I hadn't exactly gone to ground, had I?

I'd deal with that problem when the moment came, I decided. And, duly enough, it came.

It came at a time when there was a lull in the fighting at the Front. The Eastern Alliance had pulled back to regroup, the newssheets said. That meant fewer casualties being shipped back for treatment in Brytain and less ferrying work for us. It didn't mean we had to work less hard. Far from it. This was the time of the Big Drop, when the enemy shifted their attack. While they rested their soldiers, their air force took over.

The 'sheets never told the whole story, I'm sure. They talked about Zeppelin raids on London, and how our gunners and rocket battalions were destroying the attackers faster than they could be launched against us. Every day they printed photograms of airships coming down in flames. I soon spotted that they were printing the same pictures over and over again.

The rumours said that the enemy flotillas flew westwards along the Channel, then turned north and looped back eastwards towards London, downwind at maximum height with their engines shut down, invisible and silent. Every night, but especially when it was cloudy or the moon was new, they drifted over London and dropped their cargo of death onto us. Incendiary bombs, high explosive bombs and, the worst rumours said, gas and disease germs too.

Our shifts changed. We slept during the day and spent every night at full alert, roused by the air raid sirens and straining our ears for the sound of distant explosions, covering our heads with our hands and ducking when the bombs fell closer. The _crash-bangs_, we called them, the near misses. Then, after the all-clear sounded - and often before - Captain Lowther would detail us off. One vehicle to Camperdown, just up the road, another to High Gate or Finchley. Mavis and me to Hackney or Fleet.

Broken houses, broken people, broken lives. So much lost...

It was worst with the children. I remember the time when we - it was Nancy and me, that time - arrived outside a ruined house, in a shabby terraced street near Marialabone. It had taken a direct hit. The roof had fallen in, the front wall had collapsed and the roadway was covered with scattered bricks, so I had to drive carefully. It would have been disastrous if we'd broken a wheel or an axle and put our vehicle out of action.

It was early morning. The sun had just come up; a pale feeble thing it was, that December day. People from the other houses had come out of their homes and were standing around in the street. Most of them had the kind of blank expression on their faces that I was beginning to recognise. It was shock - the terrible realisation that everything had changed for them and that nothing could ever be the same again. They were broken, like I said.

I jumped out of the back of the ambulance and ran across the road towards the ruins. Dust was still hanging in the air, ghost-formed. 'Come on, you lot!' I shouted. Let's get this cleared up!' I grabbed a couple of bricks to give them a lead. One or two of the more with-it women came over to me. It was always the women who recovered first, Alfie and me noticed.

'Was there anybody in there?' I asked a stout woman with a terrier-daemon cradled in her arms. I pointed towards the fallen house.

'Mary and Pat and their kids,' she replied.

'How many of them?'

'Three, I think.'

'Did anybody get out? Was anybody away from home last night?'

'No. No, I don't think so.' She turned away from me, tears washing streaks down her dusty cheeks.

I looked again at the house. It had been reduced to a pile of smoking debris. It was hard to see how anybody inside could have survived. Unless...

'Hey!' I called. The woman turned back. 'Do these houses have cellars?'

'Cellars? No, no we don't have any cellars here.'

Nancy came up to me. 'Sunny...'

'Yes?'

'Come on. There's nobody we can help here. Let's go back. The Civil Guard can come and clear up later.'

'There must be...'

'It's hopeless. Let's go back.' Nancy took my arm. I turned to go - she was right and I was wrong - when a tiny movement caught my eye.

'Wait!' I ran over towards the house.

'Sunny, come back! It's too dangerous! It could all fall down any minute!' I ignored her. I had _seen_ something.

It was a daemon - a child's daemon, lying next to a fallen beam. She was whimpering in pain, changing form constantly. Mouse, bird, cat, bird, rabbit, mouse. Alfie slipped from my shoulder and approached her carefully, climbing gingerly over the rubble. He spoke to her.

'Her name's Minta,' Alfie told me. 'Her little boy's called Jack and he's... he's under the stairs.'

'How is he?'

Alfie spoke urgently to Minta. 'Jack's badly hurt,' he told me. 'His leg's trapped. He can't feel anything in it.'

I waved to Nancy. 'Over here! There's a boy under the stairs. Get help!'

'Alfie,' I said. ' Keep talking to Minta.' I reached out and gently picked up Jack's daemon. I was allowed to, you see. Meanwhile, Nancy was shouting orders to the bystanders. She sent a girl off to the nearest Guard station to fetch men with pickaxes and shovels.

Minta was shivering and shaking in my hand. She had stopped changing form and become a small bird - a tom-tit, I think.

'Hang on,' I said to her. Alfie looked up at me. He knew - I knew - that Minta was in agony, not only because Jack was buried under the house but also because he and she had been forced apart, probably for the first time in their short lives. 'She's getting weaker,' Alfie said.

'Yes, I know.' Minta's movements were becoming more and more feeble. Meanwhile Nancy and the men she had rounded up had formed a bucket brigade, making a pile of stone and brick on the far side of the street.

'Hurry!' I cried. We've not got much time!'

'We're doing all we can,' Nancy said. 'Are you all right there?'

We were dangerously close to the house, but I nodded. Brick by brick, board by board, stone by stone the debris was being cleared. I held on to Minta and Alfie, whispering encouragement to them. 'Stay with me, Jack. Keep going. We're nearly there.' The minutes crept by, one by one.

Then there was a roar of engines and a big lorry skidded around the corner of the street and came to a halt next to the ambulance. Three Guards leapt out, closely followed by their dog-daemons. One of the men ran around to the back of the lorry and climbed up onto it. He dropped the tailboard and started throwing tools and heavy lengths of wood into the roadway. The sergeant in charge called over to me, 'Get out of it!'

'I can't!' I shouted back. I held Minta up for him to see.

The sergeant didn't understand. He strode over and crouched down next to me. His Alsatian-daemon stood next to him, his ears pricked up, alert for danger signs. 'Get out of there now, miss. It's all going to come down!'

'No, sergeant, I can't.' I showed him Minta and told him about Jack. 'If we take Minta any further away from here it'll kill both of them.'

'All right.' The sergeant stood up and hailed his men. 'Get those logs over here. Get that wall shored up. Move it!'

But - and it all seemed to happen in slow motion, like a trick kino - it was too late. The next house shuddered, trembled and toppled into the gap that its neighbour had left. The sergeant took hold of me and pulled me bodily away from the wreckage as it fell. 'No!' I screamed.

It was too late. Minta gave a last pitiful cry, looked skyward and vanished. Pieces of grit rained all around us. The sergeant and I were nearly buried ourselves. It was a very close call indeed, they told us afterwards

Afterwards Nancy drove me back to the depot. I was absolutely filthy, covered in grey mortar and brick-dust. There were pieces of it in my hair and my clothes. I badly needed a bath.

I had to wait for it. I'd just climbed the stairs to the dorm when an off-duty nursing assistant came up to me. 'Driver Moon?' she asked.

'Yes, that's me.' I wiped my eyes with my sleeve. I'd only just stopped crying.

'The Captain wants to see you. Now.'

'Now? Look at me!'

'Now.' And she held the door open for me. I trudged back down the stairs into the yard and round the corner to the Captain's office. What could she possibly want? Couldn't it wait?

We never had to knock on Captain Lowther's door. She didn't expect it. So I walked right in, meaning to ask her if I could get cleaned up first. I was ready to make quite a fuss about it.

I never said a thing. For, sitting in the Captain's guest chair and smiling her fat, jolly, deceitful smile, was the one person I least wanted to see.

'Darling Sonya!' said Aunt Sybil. 'Thank God, I've found you at last. My dear, thank heavens you're safe!'


	6. Kensington Gardens

_Kensington Gardens_

_What's it all about, Alfie?_

Hal David and Burt Bacharach

'Aunt Sybil! What on earth are you doing here?'

My aunt settled back in Captain Lowther's guest chair and smiled. 'I might well ask you the same question. In fact, I think I will. What do you think _you_ are doing here? Why are you not at Highdean School?'

I was still feeling a little dazed. I had been caught on the back foot, as Gerry used to say.

'I... I'm an ambulance driver.'

'Is that so?'

'Yes.'

'I see.' Aunt Sybil turned to Captain Lowther, who was sitting completely still.

'Captain - are you aware of Sonya's real age?'

'She gave her age as nineteen when she joined us. I saw no reason to doubt her word.'

'Nineteen. I see. Would it surprise you, Captain, to learn that Sonya only celebrated her sixteenth birthday last June?'

The Captain shook her head. 'Driver Moon performs her duties as a fully enrolled member of the Ambulance Brigade.'

Aunt Sybil flushed. 'She is _sixteen_, Captain Lowther. She is under age. I know the law. Nobody can sign up for the armed services until they are at least nineteen.'

'The Ambulance Brigade is not an armed service, Miss Gresham.'

'Do not chop logic with me, Captain Lowther! You hold the King's Commission, do you not? You are an Army Captain?'

Captain Lowther inclined her head. 'I have that honour.'

'Then this unit is a part of the King's Army; is that not so?'

All this time I was standing by the door. I had fallen naturally into the "at-ease" position, with my feet slightly apart and my hands linked behind my back. A good thing too - it was the only thing that was keeping me from falling over, I felt so shattered with tiredness, so filthy, so much of a mess. Now it looked as if it was all going to come to nothing. Aunt Sybil would drag me back to Highdean and I'd have to turn into a schoolgirl again. 'Ma'am...?'

'Driver Moon?' The Captain turned her attention to me.

'Don't let her take me away, please! I don't want to go. I don't have to go, do I?' My voice sounded like a pathetic little squeak in my ears. Alfie snuggled against my cheek.

'Is it true, what your aunt says? Are you nineteen, as you stated on your enrolment form, or merely sixteen?'

'Sixteen, Ma'am.'

'I see. So you lied to me.'

'Yes, Ma'am.' I looked at my feet. My boots were caked with mud and red brick-dust.

'You see?' said Aunt Sybil. 'Sonya, surely you realise that you have done a dreadful thing, telling falsehoods to a commissioned officer? I demand that you apologise to the Captain now.'

'No! No, I won't!'

'Driver Moon?' The Captain's face was stern. I remembered what Mabel had told me about her - that she would stand no nonsense.

'I mean yes. Yes, I'm sorry I lied to you, Ma'am. It was wrong. But,' and I turned to Aunt Sybil, 'I'm glad too!'

My aunt bridled. 'Glad, Sonya? Glad you told an untruth? You have indeed fallen into low company if you can be _glad_ that you have brought down the good name of your family in this manner. Are you aware, Captain, who Sonya's father is? Perhaps you are not. He is Captain Sir Ronald Moon, lately a minister in His Majesty's Government and presently serving his country in command of HMS _Undaunted_. He is not without influence, Captain Lowther, and neither am I.'

'I have no doubt of that, Miss Gresham. But, you see, there exists a certain... difficulty.'

'Difficulty?'

'Yes, Miss Gresham. You see, you assure me that Driver Moon is below the normal age for service in His Majesty's forces, and she has just this moment admitted as much.'

'Then where is the difficulty?' Aunt Sybil grasped both handles of her handbag. It was a particularly large one, made of black leather and fastened with a silver grip. Her cat-daemon stared straight ahead.

'It lies here.' Captain Lowther leaned forward. 'I accepted Driver Moon's application in good faith. She stated that her age was nineteen and I wrote that information on the appropriate form. It is now a matter of official record that Driver Moon's age is nineteen years and three months. Do you see?'

'Yes, do you see?' I said. I could tell what the Captain was getting at.

'I did not give you permission to speak!' I looked at my feet again.

'Are you trying to tell me that my assertion, and Sonya's admission, that she is not old enough to serve carry no weight with you?'

The Captain leaned back in her chair and sighed. She was as worn-out as I was - as we all were. 'As I have said, it is recorded otherwise.'

'But I can show you her birth certificate!'

'You are perfectly free to do so, Miss Gresham. I should be pleased to see it.'

'And then will you let me take Sonya away from this... place, and back to her family?'

'No!' I shouted. 'No! I'm not going back with you. You're not my family!'

'You forget yourself, Sonya. You know perfectly well that, as your poor mother's sister, I am responsible for your well-being.'

'You're not! How dare you talk about Mummy! Mummy never liked you. "That awful Syb-Thing" she called you. Daddy too. He only let you stay with us because you wouldn't take a hint and because he was too kind to kick you out. You're a sponger, that's what you are, living off Daddy and me! I hate you!'

'Driver Moon!' The Captain was looking as angry as I had ever seen her.

'Shut up!' Alfie hissed, but I didn't listen to him.

'I'm sorry Ma'am, but I'm not going back with this... this gorgon!' I turned back to my aunt. 'You say I can't serve because I'm only sixteen. Do you know how old the little boy who died this morning was? He was only ten! Do you know how old some of the soldiers on the Eastern Front are? They're only fourteen! I've seen them when we ship them out to the Royal Berks and the John Radcliffe. They're all little kids!'

'Do not shout at me, Sonya. It is a bad habit, and people of our class should never shout. We do not need to shout.'

'Oh beggar you!' I bellowed. 'I hate you! I hate you!' I bent over with my hands on my knees and let my tears fall on to the office floor.

Aunt Sybil stood up. 'You see, I am sure, how impossible this has become. Sonya, you will get out of those disgusting clothes and come with me. Now!'

I stood up straight. 'I will not. I will not come with you.' Aunt Sybil was quiet for a moment. I wondered what she was going to say next. She looked at me and shook her head, and to my utter surprise I saw that there was a tear in the corner of her eye. She sat down again.

'Sonya, please listen to me. You are a bright girl, a very clever girl. You have opportunities; the like of which women my age never had. Let me tell you about something that happened when I was a child.

'My father, Lord Oakdale, once took me to hear a lecture. I was terribly young, and it was when we were living in London, in the old place. You won't remember it. Anyway, he took me to hear someone speak about the North Lands. The Arctic, where the Armoured Bears and the witch-clans live. It was a wonderful lecture - I remember the photograms the speaker showed us, of the ice-fields of Svalbard and the Northern Lights glittering in the sky. But there was one thing, one very special thing, about that talk. Do you know what it was, Sonya?'

I was intrigued, despite myself. 'No, Aunt Sybil.'

'It was the speaker. She was a woman. It was unheard of then, that a woman would get up in front of an audience at the Arctic Institute and give a lecture, and be listened to as attentively as if she were a man. She held the audience spellbound, Sonya. She inspired me. I wanted to be like her, but it was not possible.

'I knew that our father would never have let your mother or me go to the Varsity, even if we met the entry requirements. Girls of our station in life did not do such things. But Sonya, it's different for you. You have opportunities that we never had. The world has changed. Don't throw away your chances.'

'I suppose she had a monkey-daemon, this woman.'

'Yes, she did.'

'I haven't.' I stroked Alfie. 'Do you want me to be like all the old monkey-women at Highdean? Old and clever and ugly?'

Aunt Sybil shook her head sadly. 'Oh Sonya, if you only knew. She was clever, oh so clever, but she was young and very beautiful. So extraordinarily beautiful that nobody in the audience could take their eyes off her.'

'And is she still beautiful now?'

'I cannot tell. She disappeared many, many years ago. I suppose she's dead. I've still got one of the books she wrote. _The Bronze Clocks of Benin_, it's called.'

'And who was it written by?'

'Mrs Coulter. Mrs Marisa Coulter.' Aunt Sybil took hold of the handles of her bag once more.

There was silence for a moment. Captain Lowther looked up from her desk. 'Sonya,' she said quietly, 'what do you want to do? If you like, I'll release you from your terms and conditions. You can go home with your aunt. It's irregular, but...'

I was horribly tempted. Aunt Sybil's words had touched me. Why couldn't she have been like that with me before? More honest? Why hadn't she told me more about herself? And again, what good was I doing here? I hadn't saved Jack and Minta, had I? They'd died, even though I'd done all I could to help them. Nor was I all that good a driver. All of a sudden I had a choice. I could leave here right now, go back to Highdean and study, and go up to Oxford or Cantabriensis in two years' time and write and draw and paint as much as I liked. I hadn't written any stories in months or pained any pictures. I could go back to doing all the things I liked doing. I wouldn't have to have any more to do with this awful War.

'No we wouldn't, would we?' said Alfie. 'We could hide away from it all and be safe.'

'Yes...' It would be lovely, to be able to sleep as long as I liked.

And then Alfie said it. If he hadn't, I would have. 'What about Gerry?'

I gasped for breath. For a moment, I thought I was going to stop breathing for ever. Gerry. Gerry hadn't chosen the easy way out. Nor had Daddy. How could _I_? My choice was perfectly obvious when I looked at it that way.

I stood up as straight as I could. 'Ma'am? Permission to get cleaned up and return to my duties?'

'Granted, Driver Moon.' I saluted and without looking back I left the Captain's office and marched across the yard to the washrooms, tearing off my dusty tunic as I went.

I'm not sure how it happened, but it happened like this; that Alfie and I were with Mabel and Hal in Jekyll Park one Saturday afternoon, a couple of weeks after that little scene with Aunt Sybil. The War was going well, or it was going badly. It depended who you asked. Either way, it was quiet - so quiet that we had been given the afternoon off. Mabel had suggested going into Town, and I'd agreed, because Mornington, although was the buzzing hub of activity when it came to the running of the Ambulance Brigade, was a pretty dull place otherwise.

We had done a bit of shopping in Kensington and then, seeing that the weather was fine even though it was well into December, we strolled northwards, hoping for a cup of tea and a bite to eat at a little café that Mabel knew by the Serpentine Lake. The Park was broad and wide-open to the sky and a great relief from the cramped streets we had left behind in Knightsbridge, even though the trees were bare and leafless. I hadn't realised how much I was missing home, the countryside and Regulus, my pony.

With a loud slap of leather on cobblestones a platoon of soldiers marched past us, their rifles on their shoulders and their boots brightly polished. They looked wonderful, I thought, and I turned to watch them pass. 'Eyes right!' shouted the corporal leading them and he saluted us. I saluted him back, even though Mabel and I were in civvies.

'Do they always do that?' asked Mabel.

'What, salute me?'

'Yes.'

'Quite often, yes.'

'They never do it for me.'

'No?'

'No.'

'Look!' I said, changing the subject in a hurry. 'Horses!' I could see through the naked branches of the trees a pair of riders cantering up Rotten Row. 'Come on!'

We ran across the grass to the Row, but the horsemen were long gone by the time we got there. 'Oh well,' said Mabel. 'Not to mind.' I did mind, though. I minded terribly.

It looked as if we were in for an afternoon of disappointments, for when we got to the Serpentine we found the café was closed - "For The Duration", the sign on the door said.

'Beggar it!' I said. I looked at Mabel, who was blushing.

'I wish you wouldn't talk like that,' she said and her Hal shook his head at me. I giggled.

'Prude!' I said.

'Brat!' Mabel replied.

Honour satisfied, we linked hands and, with an hour or still left before we had to return to Mornington we wandered out of the Park and into Kensington Gardens. There was a particular place - a special place - I wanted to see. There was something - a special something - I had to say.

It was a circle of gravel surrounded by stone benches and rose beds, and in the middle of the circle stood a statue of a boy, flying. I don't know how the sculptor had done it, because when you got up close and looked it was obvious that the figure of the boy and the plinth of the statue were made of one unbroken piece of white marble, very firmly attached to the ground. All the same, he _was_ flying and his daemon was flying next to him. The boy was dressed all in oak-leaves, blowing in the wind of his passage, even though they were carved from the same stone as him, and his daemon clearly hadn't settled yet, because she had many different forms depending on the angle from which you looked at her. Mabel and I sat down on one of the benches and looked up at the boy. I put my shopping bags down beside me.

'Was he a witch?' said Mabel.

'Of course not, silly! He's a boy, not a girl! And look - no cloud-pine!'

'No, I see.'

'How old do you think he is?'

'Who - the boy or the statue?'

'The boy. The statue was put up in 1912. Look, it says so on the plaque.'

Mabel got up and examined it. 'Oh yes, so it does.'

'Anyway, how old do you think he is?'

'Eight? Nine? Eleven?'

'Look at his face. Go on, have a good look.' Mabel examined the boy's head closely.

'I was right. He's about ten. No, wait...'

Ah. She'd seen it.

'It's funny.' She turned to me. 'He's ten, but at the same time he's much older than that. Sometimes he looks like he's only nine or ten, and sometimes he looks like he's a grown-up. And from over here he looks like an old man.' She stood back, nearly tripping over one of the benches. 'Now he looks like a young boy again. Anyway, he _must_ be a boy. His daemon's not settled.'

Mabel sat down next to me. 'What a funny statue! I'm not sure I like it much.' She tossed her head and her Hal perched on the back of the bench. I held Alfie in my arms.

'Mabel,' I said. I paused. I never found it easy, saying what I was going to say.

She turned to me. Her hair had come loose from its band and was hanging over her shoulders, a frizzy ginger mop. 'Sunny?'

'I, er... Where do you think we could get a cup of tea?'

'What?'

'A cup of tea. I'm parched.'

'Not here!' Mabel laughed. 'We'll have to go back into the centre of Town. Come on!' She stood up.

'Wait a mo. Sit down, please.'

'Sunny? Are you all right?' Mabel sat next to me. I had my hands on my knees and was looking down at the gravel.

'What is it? What's wrong? Are you unwell? Do you want to go back now?'

'In a minute. Mabel, there's something I've got to tell you.'

'A secret?'

'Yes. A most terribly secret secret.'

'Are you sure you want to tell me?' Mabel's broad, freckled face was full of concern. 'It's not a _bad_ secret, is it?'

'That depends.'

'Depends? Depends on what?'

'Not what. Who. It depends on you.'

_Sweetest Gerry,_

_I've done it. I've told someone, just like I told you last summer. It's Mabel, the girl you met at the Hunt Ball. The red-haired girl who was so keen on you. Don't tell me you didn't notice! She's my best friend now and she's ever so nice. Do you know what, she thinks she's plain! That's not what you told me, is it?_

_Anyway, we had this talk, like I had with you. She's only the second person I've told. About Alfie, I mean. I don't think she's the only person who knows about him. I'm sure Captain Lowther does, and I think Miss Alton did, at Highdean. Neither of them ever said anything about it, though._

_It's funny. When I told Mabel I had a secret, she thought it was you. She'd seen me writing to you. You can't hide much here, we're so crammed in together. My advertising campaign's been jolly successful. Lots of new girls have joined us. That's one reason why I've had time to write to you now, us coming off double shifts as we have._

_'I know you've been writing to Geegee,' she said. 'I've seen you. He is... he is really dead, isn't he?'_

_'Yes,' I sighed. 'Yes, he's dead. I'm sure he is. I mean; there's no body. There never is, you know.'_

_Mabel knew. You know. Down with all hands. Sailors don't have graves, do they?_

_'Oh Mabel!' I said. I put my head on her shoulder for a while._

_'Sunny,' she said. 'There's nothing wrong. Nobody minds. You don't think we didn't know, do you?'_

_'No,' I sniffed._

_I could have left it there. I could have let her go on thinking that that was all it was; that I was ashamed of writing to my dear, dead, lost-at-sea brother. I could have let her comfort me, there on the bench in the Gardens by the statue of Peter Pan. But I couldn't. I didn't know when I'd next be able to screw myself up to telling her about Alfie and me. I had to tell her. I had to tell someone, just like I had to tell you._

_So I started off by telling her about Freaky Freda. Do you remember her? Freda Bamber, with her twin daemons. Sohrab and Rustum. You know. They were always arguing with each other. It was so comical to watch! Two cat-daemons, yammering away at each other and poor Freda stuck in the middle. The racket they made!_

_We gave her a horrible time, and it wasn't really fair, but you know how it is when someone's a little bit different. They get picked on._

_Mabel shook her head. 'Nasty little brats, you schoolgirls.' I flicked at her. 'Ouch!'_

_'Serve you right,' I sniggered. Then I told her. Straight off, without stopping, without letting her interrupt me._

_Mabel stared. 'But... You're normal, aren't you?'_

_'Apart from that, yes.'_

_'You get the curse?'_

_Yes.' There was no way any of us could hide that._

_'But...'_

_'Yes.' Then I told her about being special, and Alfie showed her what I meant. It was very, very quiet. There was nobody else nearby; else we wouldn't have taken the risk._

_Mabel stood up and walked over to the statue. She stared at it for a minute or so. 'I see,' she said, turning to face me. All the colour had left her cheeks. I sat and waited and held on tightly to Alfie. She turned away again. What had I done? What would Mabel do now? Would she betray me to the Captain and the other girls at the depot? I looked at the ground again. I was shaking from the effort of telling her our secret. Mabel said nothing._

_I was getting ready to stand up and go home by myself when suddenly there was a hand resting on mine. I looked up. Mabel was smiling and all her freckles were showing. Hal was resting on her forearm. 'Come on!' she said. 'Let's take the bus home. Don't forget your shopping!' She laughed out loud and so did I._

_So there it is, brother mine. Somebody else knows and it's such a relief. I hate keeping secrets - I'm rotten at it._

_I'll write again soon,_

_Your Sunny._

I wondered as we sat on the top deck of the northbound bus, whether Mabel had taken in what I'd told her or decided to forget all about it and pretend nothing had happened. But that night she and her Hal came to my bunk and snuggled down next to Alfie and me, nice and warm and soft.

'Is it all right then?' I asked.

'Of course it is, silly,' she replied and kissed me on the forehead. I hugged her in return.

'Thank you, Mummy,' I said.


	7. The Day Room

_The Day Room_

_Dance, dance, dance, little lady,  
Dance, dance, dance, little lady!  
Leave tomorrow behind._

Noël Coward

I got a letter from Aunt Sybil a few days later.  It wasn't such a bad one, for her:

_Dear Sonya,_

_Firstly, please let me say how sorry I am that we did not part as friends last Saturday.  I do hope that you appreciate that I have only your best interests at heart.  You must understand how disappointed I am that you have given up such a promising future in order to fulfil some foolish romantic dreams.  The trouble is that dreams have a habit of ending; and then there is the morning, and the day and its business to deal with.  I'm am afraid that you will wake up one day and find that the future, to which you may not have given too much thought, has arrived and that you are sadly ill-equipped to face it._

_I am sure that if your mother were still alive she would agree with me._

'Pig,' I said.

_Still, be that as it may, you have chosen your own way.  It is not a way that I can wholeheartedly endorse, but for dear Cora's sake I cannot bring myself to abandon you completely._

_I had further words with Captain Lowther following your precipitate departure and she was able to allay many of my fears concerning the Ambulance Brigade.  She has assured me that many girls of very good family are engaged in service with the Brigade.  She pointed out that your friend Miss Patterson has excellent County connections, and I have been able to verify her assertion by visiting the Pattersons in Goring and speaking to Mabel's mother.  So far, I am tolerably satisfied._

_I have, of course, written to your father and informed him of your actions.  I should not be surprised if he were to use his influence to have you extricated from your present position.  In the meantime, please remember that the blood of the Greshams flows in your veins and comport yourself accordingly.  In particular, do not fall into the habit of using coarse language.  Nobody worth knowing will think any better of you for it, and you run the risk of causing grave offence to people on whom you may one day need to rely._

_Captain Lowther has informed me that you receive an honorarium of five shillings a week, plus bed and board.  It is, of course, quite impossible  for a girl of your upbringing to subsist on such a low level of remuneration and so I have made arrangements for a suitable allowance to be paid into the Holborn branch of Coutts on a monthly basis._

'Hooray!'

_Please use this allowance wisely.  It is intended to provide for your clothing and any supplementary comestible items that you may require. I understand that Fortnum and Mason or Paxton and Whitfield may still be depended upon, even in these present straitened times._

_One last word before I close.  I do hope that you will resist the temptations which your new way of life will place before you.  I have already mentioned the use of vulgar speech.  There will be other traps and snares lying in wait for you - alcoholic liquor, fast living and casual promiscuity, to mention only a few.  I only ask you to remember who you are and to be true to yourself._

_With love,_

_Aunt Sybil_

'Well, beggar you!' I said, and Alfie laughed.  Laughed like a drain, he did.

I called us the Comrades Three, after a series of books I'd read when I was a little girl.  There were lots of them, all published in colourful covers at a shilling each.  Let's see - there were _Three in the Black Hills_, _Three to the Antipodes_, _Three in Trouble_, _Three and the Green Diamond of Andalusia, Three and the Mystery of Castle Douglas_ and my favourite, _Three in Battle_.  There were lots more of them, but I've forgotten their names now.  I wrote my own Comrades Three story when I was twelve, by the way - I called it _Three for One, Three for All_.

Anyway; Nancy White, Mabel Patterson and I were the new Three.  We hadn't been to Turquemenistan or Tasmania, and we hadn't led a charge against the Tartar cavalry or sailed the Peaceable Ocean, but I reckoned we were adventurers all the same. 

'It's a _kind_ of adventure,' said Nancy.  We were sitting in the restaurant on the top floor of Harvey's department store, next to the window.  Pigeons were swooping and flapping around the bushes in the roof garden outside.  If it had been summer we'd have sat at a table out there but it wasn't; it was winter, with chilly field-grey skies and a threat of snow to come.

'If adventuring means being tired, uncomfortable and hungry all the time,' said Mabel.  Her Hal dipped his beak into my vanilla milk-shake.

'It's not so bad at the moment,' I said.  'In fact - I don't know.  It's almost becoming boring.'

The others glared at me.  'You just wait, said Nancy.  'When you've been in the Service as long as us, you'll be glad of a quiet patch.'

According to the reports in the _Chronicle_, the War was (quite possibly) drawing to a close.  In other words, not a lot was happening.  Reading between the lines, it looked as if both sides had dug in for the winter.  Our side was somewhere west of Geneva, the Pagan Horde was somewhere to the east.  Our witch-daemons reported that the beleaguered townsfolk of the Holy City were stiffening their sinews and tightening their belts ready for a siege.  No doubt the blatts on the other side were reporting the opposite.

I gave Nancy a mock bow.  'Sorry, Ma'am.'

'Oh, get away with you!'

We'd been on a shopping expedition.  Not a little trip to get a few bits and pieces like Mabel and I had made a couple of weeks before when I'd told her our secret.  No - I'd been down to the bank and drawn all my first month's allowance in one go.  Fifty pounds!  I could almost bring myself to like Aunt Sybil if she carried on like this.  Now I could really push the boat out.

I'd bought a whole load of new clothes, some decent lipstick and, as a special treat, I'd taken us down past Piccadilly Circus to Jermyn Street and visited Floris' perfumery.  What a lovely place…  Real scent!  Real soap!  Real shampoo! Real face cream!  Real talcum powder!  I'd almost forgotten what they felt like, what they smelt like, how pretty the bottles and jars were.  I was in heaven and in the end the others had to drag me forcibly from the shop or we'd have been there all day.  Then I got some shortbread biscuits from Fortnum's and a filthy great chocolatl cake with sugar icing smothered all over it.  I'd share it out when we got back to the depot.

And now we were partaking of a delicious light lunch in the elegant surroundings of the Bamboo Room in Harvey's.  It was such a relief to be somewhere nice for a change. There was nothing wrong with the food at the depot - despite Mabel's complaints - but it became just a little repetitive after a while.  It was healthy, it was probably well-balanced and nutritious, it kept body and daemon together, but it was dull.  Stodgy, boring and dull, like school food.

'All right,' I said, pretending to get up.  'I'm off.  I'll go and work as a nurse at the Countess of Marston's Hospital for Officers.  I bet they know how to treat a girl properly there.'  I'd seen a notice on the restaurant wall, next to the sign that said:

**SHUSH YOUR DAEMON  
DON'T SPILL SECRETS**

The notice was pleased to inform diners in the Bamboo Room that, for every glass of Romain's Brytish Wine that was ordered, threepence would be donated to Lady Margaret, Countess of Marston's Hospital.

'I've heard about that place,' said Mabel.  'They say that the officers wear blue silk pyjamas and drink champagne for breakfast and all the nurses have to do is sit on the ends of the beds, chat to the patients and smoke gaspers.  They have some wonderful parties, I hear.'

'So what are we waiting for?  Let's join them.'  I took a swig of Romain's Brytish Wine.  It was pretty foul stuff, to tell the truth.

'Titles, you goose.  You can't be a nurse at Lady Margaret's unless you've got a title.'

'Oh.'  The only way I was going to get a title was to marry one. 

'We're not doing that, are we?' said Alfie.  No, I thought.  We weren't going to marry anybody.  Not while we were still _special_.

'All right then,' I said.  There was a pause while the waitress brought us bowls of lemon mousse and vanilla ice cream with cinnamon wafers.  'We'll have a party of our own.'

'A party?'

'How?'

'Where?'

'Never mind How and Where,' I said.  'The important question is, When?'

I called a Supplementary Conclave of the Three that evening, back at the depot.  We sat in a row on my bed, daemons on our laps, and feasted on the remains of the Fortnum's cake.

'Now, Compadres.  I say we throw the party right here.'

'Here?'

'In the depot?'

'Yes, here.  We can use the day room.  There's a wireless there already, so we've got music laid on.  Fred Dennison and his Romanticos are on the BBC every Saturday night, so that's when we'll do it.  Next Saturday.'

'Fred Dennison…'  Nancy had a photogram of the good-looking Mister Dennison pasted on the dorm wall next to her bed.  We'd all seen her stroking her Abel while looking at Fred's handsome moustachioed face, hadn't we?

'We can put the sofas out in the garage and set a bar up by the door.'

'And hang streamers outside the windows and put balloons up in the corners.'

'We'll need more posters.'

'It'll cost money…'

I held up my hand.  'Don't care about money.  Got money. Want fun!'

'We can get some brandtwijn and jenniver…'

'Rhein and Moselle...'

'Lemonade and bitters...'

'Fruit punch…'

'Crisps…'

'Tomato and aubergine dip…'

'Prawn toasts…'

'Cocktail sausages…'

'Cocktails!'

'Baked potatoes and cheese…'

'Oh, Mabel!  How could you!' said Nancy and me together.

'It'll be wonderful!'

'It'll be magical!'

'We'll invite all the officers from the Hospital!'

'They'll be gorgeous, every one of them…'

'And rich…'

'Ahhh!!!' the Three chorused.  But…

'What…' said Mabel and Hal.

'About…' said Nancy and Abel.

'The boss?' said Mabel and Hal.

'Leave her to us,' said Alfie and me, and we declared the Conclave closed.

We decided not to move all the sofas out after all.  You never knew, as Nancy said, when the Romantico mood might come over you, or one of the bachelor guests.

'Especially if he's eligible beyond belief!' added Mabel.

I had a tougher time than I'd expected with the Captain.  It seemed obvious to me that it was much better for us to hold a party at the depot where the boss could keep an eye on us than for me and my friends to go up west to the Locarno or the Palais Ballroom in Leicester Square, get sloshed, pass out, spend the night in the cells and be brought back between the arms of two burly constables.  I couldn't actually say that of course, because I didn't want her to stop us going to the big swanky dancehalls at some time in the future.  So instead I put on an earnest face and talked about corps morale, and brightening up the long dark winter nights and safe, wholesome, supervised enjoyment.

'We don't get very much exercise, you know, Ma'am,' I said. 'Dancing is most tremendously good for you.'

'Hmmm.  I can easily organize some cross-country runs on the Heath, if that's what you'd like.'

'Yes, Ma'am,' I said, panicking a little inside. Compulsory runs in the freezing cold were one of the things I'd hoped I'd left behind at Highdean School. 'That's such a good idea.  I wish I'd thought of it.'

'Moon!'

'Ma'am?'

'When I need your approval, I will ask you for it.  I must say that I am not at all keen on this idea of yours.'

'Yes, Ma'am.  Sorry, Ma'am.'  Oh, beggar it.  Me and my big mouth.  'But, Ma'am?'

'Yes, Moon?'  The Captain had taken up her pen and was about to dismiss me. We were sunk unless I could think of something quickly.

'Please?  None of us have been able to wear our nice frocks for ever so long.'  I was following a hunch.  'Trousers are fine, for everyday wear.  But - they do chafe so.'

'You could not perform your daily tasks in skirts, could you?'

'No, Ma'am, no.  But we'd love to put on some pretty things for a change.  Don't you think we'd look smashing in them?'

The boss put her pen down again. She looked up and smiled slightly.  'Ruffles, Fortuny pleats and feather boas?  Silk stockings? That sort of thing?'  I had never seen her out of her green serge uniform.

'Yes, Ma'am.  And shoes with Louis heels and long grey evening gloves.  Can't you just imagine how nice we'd look?'

'Hmmm.' The Captain was, I could tell, imagining it.  I held my breath. Would my little idea work?

'Very well, Moon.  May I leave the organisation of this event in your capable hands?'

'It's already in train, Ma'am.'

The Captain sighed and picked up her pen.  'Why am I not surprised to hear you say that?  Go on; get on with it.'  And Deuteronomy gave me a sideways wink.

'Send three and fourpence!'

'We're going to a dance!'

The old jokes are the best, aren't they?  It didn't matter how old they were that Saturday afternoon, we were so excited.  I was standing on the stairway outside the day room supervising the preparations for the evening.  We'd rolled back the carpet and stored it in the drugs cupboard.  The floor underneath was in better condition that I had dared to hope. One of the new girls had got a can of wax polish from the stores and was applying it to the boards while the others walked up and down with lengths of flannelette bound over their boots, polishing the surface.  With any luck we'd have a decent dance floor in no time at all.

I delivered the invitations to the Countess of Marston's Hospital myself.  It was an odd feeling to be sent down into the area basement for a cup of tea with the servants while my note was taken up to Lady Margaret.  Afterwards, of course, they realised their mistake and invited me upstairs with many apologies and we got on very well.  Even so, I got my first inkling of what Aunt Sybil had meant about my new way of life.  There were some things I would no longer be able to take for granted, like entering people's houses by the front door.

We'd agreed that those officers who could not make their own way to Mornington would be transported by ambulance, so I set two of the new bugs to tying red-white-and-blue ribbons to the least decrepit vehicle we had.  I had them scrub away the blood-stains, too.

Once the floor was looking half-decent we set to work on the walls.  Tinsel, paper streamers, kinema posters, official portraits of the Royal Family, anything would do - anything at all to hide the awful state of the paintwork underneath.  I got hold of some coloured sello and fixed it over the lamps to add an air of mystery and glamour to the place.  Meanwhile, Mabel was busy in the kitchens getting the food together and Nancy was polishing the glasses we'd hired for the occasion.

Daddy always says that an effective leader knows when to delegate his authority, so I told the least dim of the new girls to carry on and went up into the dorm to look at the parcel Aunt Sybil had sent from home.  It had arrived that morning, just in time.

I tore off the wrappings, saving the string and paper of course, and inspected the contents.  Yes. Yes!  She'd packed the red silk evening dress - my favourite.  She'd also packed its yellow sash, but that could stay in the wardrobe.  It looked like a banana.  There was my nicest underwear too, and the gloves, shoes, handbag and jewellery I'd asked for.  Good old Aunt Syb!  The note she'd slipped into the tissue paper told me to have a lovely time and not to do anything I might regret later.

'Sybil, dearest,' I said.  'I'm going to do lots of regrettable things!'

'You bet!' said Alfie.

I laid the clothes out on my bed.  I'd change into them later.  You see, I had a plan.

The Countess had told me that fifteen of the men in her care were well enough to come to our dance, but would need transport.  That meant two runs in the ambulance, as there were eight casualty seats in it.  At quarter-past seven, still wearing my driver's uniform, I arrived outside the hospital.  The men were waiting in the hall - some of them standing by the door and looking very well in their freshly pressed tunics and polished Sam Browns.  The others were sitting by the walls, gripping the heads of their canes or staring straight ahead at the opposite wall or down towards the black and white marble tiled floor, with their equally dejected daemons by their feet.  I did my best to hide my sorrow - why should they have to suffer so? - and put on my brightest smile.  'Come on, chaps,' I said.  'First come, first served!  I've got eight places.'

Four of the more able-bodied men each took the arm of one of his brother officers and helped him to his feet, down the steps and into the back of the ambulance.  I followed, choking on my tears.

'That's what Gerry would have done,' said Alfie.

'Yes.  Of course he would.  Yes,' I sobbed, wiping my eyes on my sleeve.

I ferried the first group from Belgravia to Mornington in ten minutes flat.    My driving had become pretty good by now, although tending to follow Mabel's example when it came to speed.  I pulled into the yard and stopped as gently as I could manage.  Looking up, I saw that someone had fixed a string of coloured light bulbs over the stairs to the day room (in defiance of the black-out) and arranged streamers around the door.  Over it a cardboard sign said _Grands Frolics de Mornington_.  I sighed.  It was just like the parties at home in the old days.  Well, almost.  The wireless was turned up to full volume.  You could hear it booming over the rooftops.  There'd be some complaints in the morning!

I blew the hooter and, in a rustle of satin and a patter of heels, my driver comrades, transformed into elegant, well-groomed young ladies for a few hours, came down the stairs into the yard and helped their guests out of the back of the ambulance.  I tooted my horn again.  'Back soon!' I shouted, and hared out of the yard as fast as I could go.

It took less than ten minutes this time.  In a splatter of flying gravel I skidded to a halt outside the hospital. I leapt out of the door and ran up the steps.  There were, by my count, seven more passengers for me to take to Mornington.  I banged on the door, and it opened wide, revealing the people inside.  All of them.  I stood stock-still, feeling my jaw drop.

Oh.  Bloody. Hell.  Bloody. Beggaring. Hell.  There were my seven officers.  And _there_, standing or sitting next to them, were ten nurses, dressed up to the nines, wearing dinky little diamond tiaras on their heads and clutching their poncy daemons in their arms.  That was the last thing we needed.  Competition.  And _titled_ competition, at that.  I had to think fast.  Again.

'Lady Sonya!'  It was the Countess, standing at the bottom of the staircase with her ermine-daemon in her arms.  'How wonderful to see you.' Yes, I hadn't been _entirely_ truthful with her.

I bobbed a curtsey.  'Lady Margaret. I've come for the rest of your young men.'

'And my young ladies too, I hope.  We can't have you ambulance drivers hogging all our chaps, can we?'  I saw one of the titled darlings nod vigorously and whisper to the creature standing next to her.

I glued my most innocent smile to the front of my face.  'No, of course not, Lady Margaret.  The, er, Ladies' Carriages will be here directly.  They were close behind me when I crossed Oxford Street.'

'Oh, marvellous,' said Lady Margaret.  'You do think of everything, don't you?  Now, I shall expect to see you back here again no later than eleven-thirty.'

'Yes, Lady Margaret.'

'And Sonya…' the Countess beckoned my over to her side and spoke quietly.  'Most of them… seem all right, but… do you know what I mean?'

'Yes, Lady Margaret.'  She looked at me more closely that she had before.

'Good.  Yes, I see that you do.  If there is any difficulty… if you need to telephone… for assistance, you know… or ask one of my girls to help, please don't hesitate.  The men are in your charge now.'

I looked into her eyes.  They were misty with concern.  'Yes, Lady Margaret.'

The Countess kissed my cheek. 'Go on, then,' she said.  'Enjoy yourselves!'

I delivered my remaining passengers to the waiting drivers.  From upstairs the sound of the wireless mingled with conversation and the sound of feet on bare floorboards.  'You _are_ joining us, aren't you?' said Nancy, looking very pretty in yellow taffeta, bother her.

'Oh yes.  I just need to change.  With you in just a tick.'  It was seven forty-five.  I had fifteen minutes.

In the empty dorm I quickly washed those bits of me that I'd missed before which or needed re-doing.  There had been _such_ a rush for the bathrooms earlier!  Then I got out of my functional, practical, but hideously unflattering driver's clothes and the cheap and now rather grey cotton underwear that went with them.

Aunt Sybil, bless her, had included a rigidly whale-boned corset with my things.  I laughed.  I was going to _dance_, not sit bolt upright all evening! I put it to one side. I got into my underthings, rolled up my stockings - beautiful black silk stockings from Harvey's -  and attached them to my garter-belt. Then a nice frilly petticoat, also black. Now for the frock…  I lifted it up by the hem and dived head-first into it, feeling it slither down my front and settle on my hips and shoulders.  I jumped up and down a couple of times to make sure it was all in place and then…  And then…

And then I realised that my plan had gone all to pieces.  There were eighteen buttons, hooks and eyes attached to the back of the dress and nobody to do them up for me.  No lady's maid, no Mabel, no Nancy, no Mummy, no nobody. There'd be no grand entrance for me. No entrance at all.

I sat down on the bed and cried.  How could I have been so stupid?  Was I going to have to stay here all night?  Wouldn't somebody miss me and come up to the dorm and rescue me?  Yes, they probably would, but by then it would be too late.

'Oh beggar it, beggar it, beggar it!' I cried out in my vexation.  I tried reaching over my shoulders, but I couldn't find even one button, let alone its button-hole.

That was that, then.  There I sat, with my beautiful red silk dress flapping around my shoulders and my head in my hands, crying like a little girl.  I'd miss the whole thing.  Just because I'd tried to be so bloody clever.  What an idiot!  Everyone else would be enjoying themselves at the party, but not me.  Not stupid, clever-clogs me.

'I'll go home tomorrow,' I told Alfie.  'Aunt Sybil's right.  I'm not fit to be allowed out, a silly little kid like me.'

Alfie nuzzled me.  'Sunny?' he said.

'Yes, I'm Sunny. What do you want?'

'There is a way...'

'There is?  What way?'

'Our way.  If we do something _special_…'

It was the stroke of eight o'clock.  I stood outside the half-closed door of the day room, my evening bag in my hand, Alfie on my shoulder and my heart thumping faster than I had ever known it do before.  The music had stopped for a few moments while the BBC's announcer read the news.  Everyone inside was facing the set, as if they were watching the speaker, and so they never saw me.

The news was the usual stuff.  Truth and half-lies.  Look; don't misunderstand me.  I knew that we were in the right.  I knew that we had to stand up for what we believed and that the Church had to be defended from the forces of chaos.  I was not going to stand by and do nothing about the threat to our spiritual heritage; nor was I going to let Gerry's loss be all in vain.

It was just that I wasn't stupid, either.  I knew that there were two kinds of truth - official truth and the real thing.  Official truth was like my official age.  I was nineteen.  Yes?  You would like to argue with that, Miss Gresham?  The real truth was that I was only sixteen and a half.  But which truth mattered?  It didn't matter; that was the answer.  What mattered was that I was doing my bit for my people, for my home and for my God.

So even though I knew that the War probably wouldn't be over by the Spring, even though I knew that the official truth was probably untrue, I knew where my duty lay.  It was _here_; here in Mornington, doing what I could to help the poor bastards who had been maimed and crippled by the Enemy.

There.  Was that coarse enough for you, Auntie?

The bulletin ended, and the announcer's tone of voice changed between one breath and the next; from solemnity to gaiety:

'And now, by live relay direct from the Orchid Room of the Leonardo Hotel in the heart of London's West End, the BBC is proud to present Glamorous Nights, starring your favourite entertainers!'

Music swelled in the background - saxophones, clarinets and strings.  A drum-roll followed, and the announcer read out the list of tonight's performers.  A ventriloquist and a trapeze act (on the _wireless_?), a balalaika quintet, a classical pianist (yawn) and…

'Your own, your very own, Fred Dennison and his Romanticos!'

There was a burst of applause.  That was my cue.  I flung the door wide open and made my entrance.  Everyone in the room turned to look at me as from the wireless came the sound of debonair Fred, standing in front of the microphone and crooning:

_Those who dance and romance while they dance,  
They seem so happy and gay,  
Tho' they sing while they swing and they sway,  
Somehow I can't feel that way,_

_For I'm dancing with tears in my eyes,  
'Cause the girl in my arms isn't you,  
Dancing with somebody new,  
When it's you that my heart's calling to,_

_Trying to smile once in a while,  
But I find it so hard to do,  
For I'm dancing with tears in my eyes,  
'Cause the girl in my arms isn't you._

One of the officers came forward and bowed before me.  He took me by the arm and led me to the middle of the dance floor.  It was my moment.  My time had come, and I was going to make the most of it. This was _my_ night!

* * *

_Dancing With Tears In My Eyes_ by Al Dubin and Joe Burke is quoted without permission. 


	8. Hampstead Heath

_Hampstead Heath_

_Take your son and heir where there is sun and air_

London Underground poster

Sunny whirled around the floor of the ambulance depot's day room in a dizzying blur of red silk. Her feet skimmed the freshly-waxed floor, seeming hardly to touch it.

She was having, oh, the most wonderful time, I could tell. If anyone could tell, it was me. It was just the sort of thing that Sunny enjoyed. She had been to so few parties since her mother died. Because it was an informal event - a typical Sunny affair - there were no dance cards. None of the officers could reserve a dance with her, but they were disciplined men. Good manners were second nature to them.

Good manners came naturally to Sunny, too, despite her harum-scarum approach to life. She was the kind of girl who could get you into all sorts of trouble and you'd get all steamed up about it and really want to lay into her; but then she'd defuse your anger with a swift apology and a winning smile. And then she'd go and put it right, like that time last summer when she got Gloria Winchelsea into such a terrible state over the swimming gala results. It all turned out well and - no surprise to anybody - not only was Gloria proved innocent of fiddling the lap times but Sunny still came out the winner. As ever.

During the gaps between the songs, while the comedian Joey Dunn was on, Sunny and I gathered around the makeshift bar while she drank refreshing fruit punch out of tall glasses. Captain Lowther was there, holding a large ladle (which I suspect was the same one that the cooks used to dole out the evening soup ration) and smiling broadly at the sight of her young ladies enjoying themselves. Sunny chatted with the young men, treating them all equally, being careful not to favour any particular one over his fellows. Aunt Sybil had trained her better than she knew.

Then there was a roar of laughter and a burst of applause from the wireless, and the music started again. 'Who's next?' asked Sunny and the young men, and they were such very _nice_ young men, looked around to see if there was one of them who hadn't yet danced with her and pushed him forward, blushing furiously as like as not. Being Sunny, she could be the belle of the ball without upsetting any of her friends. For example, she didn't monopolise the best-looking of the men. In fact, if anything she picked the shy ones, the ones who needed her help, whether it was in gathering together the confidence to ask the prettiest girl in the room if she would like to dance, or some actual physical assistance; for many of them were still limping from their wounds, or were missing an arm, or a hand, or a foot. They were the ones she went for. The hurt ones. I loved her more than ever for it.

About half past eight there was a banging at the outside door, and Mabel went over to answer it. It was one of Lady Margaret's nurses, rather flushed, asking if this was Lady Gresham's party. Quite truthfully, for she knew no differently, Mabel told her no, she must have made a mistake, and the girl left, stammering an apology. I wondered how Sunny would explain _that_ to the Countess. She'd find a way, I knew.

And so the evening passed in a blizzard of delight. I had never seen Sunny and her friends looking so deliriously happy and of course I shared in their happiness. With a final surge of applause _Glamorous Nights_ ended and was succeeded by a programme of gramophone records. Some of the songs they played were romantic ballads; others were up-tempo dance numbers, like the Albery hit _She's The Girl_:

_Who's the girl who,  
Is always true to,  
The one who's,  
In sight?_

_Who's the flame who,  
Is just the same to,  
The left or,  
The right?_

_And who's the one who,  
Might just succumb to,  
The one who,  
Just might?_

(Unison) _Her!_

_Yes, she's the girl who,  
You'd like to,  
Be nice to,  
Tonight!_

There could not have been a man in the room who would not have relished the opportunity to be nice to Sunny; and not one of them who wouldn't have remembered the promise he made when he left home; to treat every girl he met as he would expect a brother officer to treat his sister.

When the slow songs came on, and the couples in the room grew closer together, holding each other gently and moving slowly around the floor, I sensed the love in Sunny; flowing out from her and touching everybody there. It was the most extraordinary sensation - I cannot begin to describe it. The air was smoky and warm. The lights - orange, yellow and red - diffused an amber glow and the young men and women, hands clasped, cheeks touching, entered a kind of rapture. Each of them had naturally gravitated to another; had sought them out even though they did not consciously know it. I knew it. I _felt_ it. It was as true for Sunny as it was for all her compadres.

A hush settled over the day room. It was... it was a form of sanctity, I think. A blessing, if that doesn't sound too presumptuous.

Round and round the floor they went, sharing one another's warmth; fears and pain and hardship a long way off now, no enemies left in all the world except one. One enemy who could not be sent away. One enemy from whom it was impossible to hide. One enemy who would come - and did come - when he was ready. He came in a raucous clangour of bells and chimes; within the day room and outside. He came, although nobody wished him to, and he spoke the same words to everyone there.

'Time's up,' said Time, the uninvited guest, the parent at the top of the staircase, the constable at the door. 'It's time to stop and put away your dreams and go home.' Somebody turned the wireless off, and somebody else turned on the glaring white light in the centre of the room, and the couples stopped, and stood apart from one another; surprised, embarrassed at being caught in such sudden, shameful intimacy.

The young men and their daemons bowed to their partners. The young ladies curtsied in their turn. Promises were made; to see one another soon, to throw another party in a week or two, to come and visit at the hospital, or at the depot. Then the sound of klaxons in the yard, and it was time to go.

As Sunny had brought the officers from the Hospital (for her own good reasons), two of the girls took them back. No doubt they received a stiff telling-off from Lady Margaret about the appalling way her nurses had been treated. No doubt they felt betrayed by Sunny, even though they understood what she had done and why. I knew that Sunny would do her best to make it up to them, as she always did.

'We'll tidy up tomorrow,' announced Captain Lowther in a softer voice than I had ever heard her use before. 'Bed now. Sweet dreams, everybody.'

'Thank you, Ma'am,' they all said and turned to leave. The Captain stood by the door and gently kissed each girl as she passed. _I_ knew why - and so did many of the girls - but none of them had any thought of denying her this small pleasure.

In the dormitory, Sunny threw herself onto her bed in a flurry of silk, feathers and lace, and gave an ecstatic sigh. She picked me up, held me to her face and kissed me. 'Well, Alfie,' she said in a voice that was utterly saturated with joy. 'What did you think of that?'

I was grateful for the tabs that were fixed to the shoulders of Sunny's working tunic. Many people keep their daemons in their pockets, as if they were a handkerchief or a packet of sweets, but I think that lacks dignity. I like to see where I am, and where I'm going. Were I naturally formed after one of the larger animals - a cougar, say, or a lion - I would walk next to Sunny. That much is obvious. But the mink-form I adopted was too small to be allowed to spend much time at ground level, so to be able to loop those tabs around my forelegs and cling on to Sunny's shoulders was a great relief.

I clung on now as we swept the floor of the day room, before going around the corner to Saint Barnabas' Oratory to attend Divine Worship. I made sure that Sunny took her spiritual duties seriously. Why were we fighting this war, if not to ensure our spiritual survival? The Horde had no respect for our beliefs or way of life, that was certain.

Sunny was whistling - yes, whistling, Aunt Sybil - _She's The Girl_ while she lifted the dust and crumbs from the night before into a great cloud and hustled it out of the door. I knew that she would do just as good a job of singing _The Holy Spirit Triumphant_ in an hour's time. A grain or two of dust entered my right nostril and I sneezed, not because it irritated my mucus membranes but because I thought it was time that Sunny paid me some attention.

'Alfie?', said Sunny. 'Are you all right?' She was wearing her second-best uniform against the dirt and mess. Soon she'd have to put down her broom and get ready to go out.

'Just a small particle of matter. Nothing to worry about.'

'Good,' said Sunny, and returned to her sweeping.

After Church came lunch - a proper Sunday dinner. Because of the lull in the War the food shortages had eased a little and so the helpings were more generous than they had been only a few weeks previously. Sunny ate well - she always ate well, I saw to that - and if the other girls envied her ability to eat like a horse and yet remain lithe and slender they said nothing about it. Then we were free to do as we liked for three hours. I knew what we would do and where we would go.

Sunny gathered together the Three and we all hopped on a 'bus and took a twopenny ride to Hampstead. Nancy wanted to go to the Spaniards Inn, and Mabel was keen on window-shopping on Haverstock Hill but Sunny wanted to go out on the Heath. 'We'll do the other things later,' she promised, 'But not yet. I want some exercise.'

'_More_ exercise? After last night?' said Mabel, with a look of exaggerated horror. Her Hal winked knowingly at me.

Sunny ignored her. 'Come on, slowcoaches,' she called out and leaped from the rear platform of the 'bus to the pavement. 'Last one to the Ponds buys the teas!'

I held on like grim death as my lovely girl galumphed along the paths and through the trees and bushes until she reached the largest of the Ponds. The Papal Legate's residence was not far off. I could see its yellow flag flying over the treetops. Sunny's hair had come undone from its clips and was tumbling down her back in great cascades of darkness. I was tempted to hold on to them instead the material of her tunic. It would have meant I was holding on to _her_ - my beloved Sonya.

By the time Nancy and Mabel arrived panting at the stall, Sunny had bought three cups of tea. She handed them out, and the others thanked her. The seats around the Pond were occupied - it was a bright, fine day and not at all cold for January - but Sunny found us somewhere to sit on a half-empty bench. An old man shoved up to make room for us. His magpie-daemon regarded us quizzically. I couldn't help noticing that the daemon's gaze lingered on Sunny and me and a shiver ran up and down my back. The old man's expression was difficult to read, but I sensed that he was deeply disturbed by us. In some way, he _knew_ about us. I wondered how that could possibly be. Sunny turned and stared back at the man, but he said nothing, did nothing. After a while, he stood up, tipped his cap to us, and, with one last glance in my direction, walked off.

'What a bloody cheek!' said Sunny. 'Did you see the way he looked at me? How extraordinarily rude!'

'I thought you were used to that,' said Mabel.

'Being looked at by men, I mean,' said Nancy.

'It's not as if,' said Mabel.

'It doesn't happen _all_ the time,' finished Nancy.

'Yes, but... no, but... it was _different_.'

'I should hope so, sweetie. He was old enough to be your grandfather.' Hal and I exchanged grins. Mabel could be most exceedingly dry when she wished.

'Oh, forget it!' said Sunny. But we didn't. Instead, we wandered around the Heath, and watched the kite-flyers, and had another cup of tea. Then we drifted over to Haverstock Hill and walked most of the way down it. The shops were full of nice clothes - though not as nice as they might have been a year or two previously, before material began to be diverted to make uniforms and bandages and parachutes.

Mabel shook her head. 'Too late,' she said. 'That's the way it's always been for me. Too late!' The shop windows mocked her, blackout-lined and empty-eyed.

It was all going wrong. We had all been so happy last night, and now... Now we had ordinary life, and a long, dull Sunday afternoon to get through. It was becoming unbearable all over again, just as it had when we were working all hours and looking after horribly injured men, women and children. We still didn't understand the meaning of war - the way you spend most of your time doing nothing, or wasting your time in trivial tasks, preparing for action. The action, we were finding, wasn't the problem - not at the time, anyway. It was the time before or afterwards - when you were dreading what was to come or remembering what had happened. When were the nightmares worse? 'Before,' said Sunny and, 'Afterwards,' said I.

There was only another hour or so left before we had to report to the depot, so we decided it was better to go home now and maybe read for a while than to mope around the streets of north London for the rest of the afternoon.

We waited by the 'bus stop for what seemed like hours, but no 'bus came. In the end we walked home. It wasn't really very far. (We walked, I say. I rode on Sunny's shoulder as usual). Sunny was still whistling that dreadful song as we entered the depot yard. 'Please,' I said in her private ear. 'Give it a rest!'

She turned her head and glared at me. I glared back. We were still upset by the incident with the old man. I decided to let Sunny go on whistling. Perhaps one of the compadres would throttle her for me.

The yard was the usual mixture of order and chaos. A row of ambulances stood against the right-hand wall. They were the ones that were ready to go. Their fuel reservoirs were full of benzenol, their oil sumps were topped up and their voltaic cells freshly charged. Although we were drivers, not mechanics, we were expected to know how our vehicles worked and how to carry out simple repairs. A driver who telephoned the depot and called out a breakdown crew over a simple matter like a broken plug-lead would get, at the very least, an ear-charring lecture from Captain Lowther.

The sound of hammering and drilling came from the workshop. The crew were doing some damage repairs, or an engine decoke probably. Not our fault - we hadn't had any incidents for more than three weeks now. A bright blue-white light suddenly flared in the fast-growing gloom. Ah. Damage repairs, then and the welders would be working until late.

There was one other vehicle in the yard. It was a most unusual one for this part of Mornington. 'Ooh look!' cried Nancy. 'A Wolseley!' Indeed it was. The flying W mascot on the bonnet proved it. It was a Wolseley Roadster, a special model with wire wheels, chromium-plated wings and triple exhaust pipes. Even though it was rapidly getting dark, the roof had been folded back, revealing a red leather interior.

There was nobody in the car, so we were free to speculate about its owner. 'They cost a fortune,' said Nancy.

'And they go like the wind!' said Mabel.

'Perhaps it's the General's,' I suggested to Sunny. We were inspected from time to time by someone from Brigade HQ. It was depressingly likely that some staff officer with nothing better to do might suggest to his superior that now would be a good time to go and check up on the silly fillies at Depot Number 12.

'Let's go and look in the office,' said Sunny. Good idea, I thought. Any visitor would automatically be taken to see the Captain. She never took any afternoons off. The Three tiptoed across the yard to Captain Lowther's door and Sunny stood next to it with her back to the wall. 'In you go,' she said to me.

I might have guessed. Sunny and I can manage about three yard's separation without any undue discomfort.

'Very well,' I said. If I must.' Sunny knelt down and I slipped from her shoulder and crept as inconspicuously as I could into the office. The Captain was sitting at her desk as usual and in front of it stood a man in uniform. Not the khaki uniform of a soldier, nor the dark blue of a naval officer, nor yet the sky-blue of the Aerial Corps. No, this main was wearing a suit of mid-grey, and he was holding his cap in his hands. He had, we think, not been standing in the office long.

'You must understand,' the Captain was saying, 'that I cannot, under any circumstances, give out the name or whereabouts of any member of my staff to any person, unless he or she is a relative of the staff member concerned. Are you in that position?'

'No, Miss, no I ain't,' said the man. He was middle-aged, balding and stooped. Too old to serve, then, and too unfit even if he had tried to volunteer. 'But the Major said...'

'The Major?'

'Major Clarke, Miss. My employer. He said that I was to come here and...' He faltered.

'And what, man? Spit it out!'

'And find Lady Gresham.' I felt a twinge run down my back. Behind me, Sunny started.

'Why is your Major Clarke looking for a Lady Gresham?' Captain Lowther's voice was grim. The man's mouse-daemon whimpered and sucked on her whiskers - a dirty, disgusting habit.

'He would like to extend his compliments, Miss, and invite her to a soiree at the officers' mess.'

'Just her?'

'And any friend she might like to bring with her, the Major said.'

'I see. Well, my man, I do not know why your employee believes that we have a Lady Gresham here, or why she would consent to accompany you. When is this so-called soiree to take place?'

'This evening, Miss.'

'And where?'

'The Officers' Mess, King's Guards Barracks, Miss It's in Chelsea.'

'Well, that sounds very fine. But, unfortunately for your Major Clarke, a mistake has been made. There is no Lady Gresham here. You have wasted a journey and you have also wasted valuable benzenol fuel that is needed for the fire service and our ambulances. You had better go home now.'

'Yes, Miss.' The chauffeur turned and left the office, nearly treading on me where I hid. Sunny and the rest of the Three watched while he got into the driver's side of the Wolseley. I caught sight of his face as he passed. It was full of fear.

With a whir of the self-starter and a roar from its Series III engine the Roadster left the yard. Its tail-lights quickly faded into the evening darkness. 'Whew,' Nancy said. 'That was close!'

'Close? What do you mean, close?' said Sunny.

'I mean close, you donkey. He was probably a white-slaver, or something like that.'

'No, he wasn't?'

'How do you know?'

'He knew my name. Lady Gresham!'

'You're not Lady Gresham,' said Mabel. 'You're Sunny Moon. Miss Sonya Moon. _Driver_ Moon. Third Class.'

'Yes I know, Mabel,' and Sunny adopted her you're-terribly-dim-so-I'll-explain-this-very-carefully-and-slowly tone of voice 'But I'm _nearly_ Lady Gresham.' She explained that Mummy had been Lady Gresham before she married Daddy. 'She was just ordinary Mrs Moon for ages before Daddy got his knighthood and she became Lady Moon. Before she died...' Sunny choked, and so did I. There was a silence, broken only by the barking of a dog in one of the houses nearby.

'Well, anyway,' said Nancy. 'You've had a lucky escape. Come on, let's go inside.' So we went, and only I knew how Sunny was feeling.

Eight-thirty and time for lights-out. Sunny was restless, unlike most of the other girls in the dormitory. They were still tired after the previous night's excitement. But Sunny had experienced the party in a different way from her friends. It had been _her_ party, _her_ night. She had been excited too, but more than that, she had been deeply moved by the wave of emotion that had flooded over her, and me, that night. She wanted more... she wanted to feel the blood fizzing in her veins again. She wanted, above all, to hold, and be held by, a man.

I could have stopped her, I know. I argued with her silently, but it was an argument I was doomed to lose, because I felt the urge too, and I dreamed of the union that would be ours, if once a man's hand touched my back, and stroked my fur, and spoke to Sunny with words of love. Perhaps if the afternoon hadn't been such a flat disappointment, or that strange old man hadn't upset us so... No. I'm making excuses for us. We knew we were behaving foolishly.

Nine o'clock and all was quiet. Sunny and I got silently out of bed, dreading creaking springs, and crept down the stairs. She carried her bag with last night's party frock bundled up inside it. I preceded her, shivering in the cold. While she waited by the door I ran across the yard and slid back the bolts that held the gates shut. There were goose-bumps all over my legs and their hair was standing up on end.

I beckoned Sunny over. 'Quick!' I mouthed, afraid to break the silence. She ran across the yard and stood next to me.

'Alfie,' she said. 'You're shaking!' Her frosted breath was full in my face.

We passed through the gate and I pushed it back. 'There,' I said. 'That'll do, until we return.'

Sunny picked me up, and we walked to Eversholt Station, where we found a taxicab driver who was willing to take us to Chelsea. She changed her clothes in the back of the cab, to the driver's great amusement and severe loss of concentration. I helped her again, clandestinely this time. At a quarter to ten we pulled up outside the Chelsea Barracks. 'Here we are, Miss,' the driver said.

'How much?' Sunny asked, burrowing into her handbag.

'On the house,' the cabbie said. 'Worth every penny for the show you gave us.' His stoat-daemon nodded her head vigorously. 'You call me when you're ready to go home.' He winked and drove off, leaving us standing outside the guardhouse. Sunny walked up to the sergeant sitting behind the glass and asked him to inform Major Clarke that Lady Gresham was waiting for him. The man picked up his telephone, spoke, smiled at some shared joke, and told Sunny that the Major would be with her directly.

I blame myself. I still do. Even then, I could have done something. It wasn't too late. We could have disappeared into the night, walked across London and made it back to the depot by midnight. It was a Sunday night, and quiet. We would have been safe. Nobody would have known. But... there was that tingling in Sunny's blood, and our shared desire. And so we waited. And presently a man came, and a door was opened, and we followed him into the corridor that lay beyond.


	9. Chelsea Barracks

_Chelsea Barracks_

_Jolly good luck to the girl who loves a soldier_

Walter de Frece

It was all very pleasant to begin with. The guard summoned an orderly, who bowed deeply to us. His terrier-daemon followed his example. Then he led us through a hallway and down a long corridor which tunnelled deep into the heart of the building. There was a blue carpet under Sunny's feet and the wood-panelled walls were hung with regimental flags, trophies and photograms. The pictures showed groups of soldiers - platoons, companies, whole battalions - formed up on parade. Some of them had obviously been taken in Brytain but many others dated from the time of the Empire's ascendancy. Men wearing tropical whites stood in rigid lines in front of the Pyramids of Ygypt or the Mahal of Koossh. Others were clad in furs and snowshoes and carried the carcasses of seals and arctic foxes over their shoulders. The northern lights hung in ghostly curtains above their heads. The air was heavy with military tradition, freighted with history.

The corridor was lit by flaring naphtha lamps fixed in wall-mounted sconces, spaced at regular ten-foot intervals. Our shadows crept silently across the floor and walls as we passed; now behind us, now before us. Sunny's red dress brushed against the carpet, leaving a rustling sussuration of silk in our wake. I held on to the dance-netting stitched to her left shoulder and looked over the top of the orderly's head. He was a short man and Sunny was tall for her age.

The corridor eventually opened out into a hallway with a wide staircase at the far end. The orderly, who had been voiceless throughout our progress down the passageway, indicated with a gesture of his arm that we should precede him up the stairs. We did so, Sunny lifting the hem of her dress with her left hand to prevent herself from tripping. We ascended the stairs at a stately, formal pace. A chandelier of iron and sparkling crystal hung from an ornate plaster moulding fixed high up in the stair-well and lit the greater expanses that had opened up around us. The walls were covered with large, elaborately-framed oil-paintings of long-dead Generals and long-fought battles; glorious in gold, silver and scarlet. The effect was imposing and very grand.

As we reached the top of the flight we became aware of the sounds of men talking and glasses chinking, and the smell of smoke-leaf hazing the air. A door, made of dark oak and bearing a regimental escutcheon of polished silver, was standing half open on the other side of the landing. It was from behind this door that the sounds were coming.

A row of grey-upholstered chairs stood against the walls of the landing. The orderly bowed again and pointed to them. His meaning was plain, and Sunny took a seat. Her skirts belled out around her ankles as she sat down. I left my place on her shoulder and crouched on the chair next to her. 'Sunny,' I said. 'I don't like this place. I really don't. It frightens me.'

Sunny smiled at me. 'Silly Alpharintus,' she said. 'There's nothing to worry about.' Her hair had come loose again and was tumbling down her back. My girl could never keep it tied up for very long; it was too unruly. She put out her hand and ran it up and down my spine, trying to reassure me that all was well.

We waited while the orderly crossed the landing and passed through the half-open door. I noticed that he slipped through the gap between the door and its frame without touching either or needing to open the door any further. Nothing happened for a minute or two. The talking inside the room carried on as before.

After a minute or two there was a burst of laughter and the door swung wide open. A man walked through it - a tall man, wearing full-length breeches and a mess-jacket of blue and red over a white shirt. He crossed the landing, bowed to Sunny and took her right hand, brushing it with his lips. 'Lady Gresham,' he said. 'I am Captain Howard. It is both an honour and a very great pleasure to meet you. Would you...?' and he indicated the door.

Sunny smiled very graciously and rose to her feet. The officer led her into the Mess, stepping back so that she could pass through the door. I was perched on Sunny's shoulder again and the man's panther-daemon walked beside us, her body sinuous and full of power. 'Lady Gresham,' said Captain Howard, 'May I present the gentlemen of the King's Guard?'

There were so many impressions for us to take in all at once; a large room with wood-panelled walls bearing battle honours, memorial plaques and regimental insignia. Sofas and chairs in polished, buttoned leather. Low tables, on which stood crystal glasses, filled with amber liquid. A deep-pile carpet of royal blue. Bright anbaric lighting. A white marble fireplace, in which a wood fire burned. On top of it a heavy mantlepiece, and above that a portrait of the King. A wide door on the far side of the room, through which could be seen a large dining table of red mahogany which gleamed with silver plate and Venetian glass. And, seated on the chairs and sofas, or standing in small groups were the officers of the King's Guard; immaculate in their perfectly-pressed uniforms, handsome in their moustaches and side whiskers, impressive with their large, elegant, perfectly-groomed daemons. They all stood up and bowed as we entered the room.

Captain Howard indicated a chair and Sunny, still smiling, sat down. Oh! How lovely she was then! How wonderful was our shared delight in the admiring glances she received! An orderly approached with a glass of liqueur on a tray and Sunny took it and sipped its contents. A perfect Chartreuse it was, sparkling like an emerald in its faceted goblet.

'Where is Major Clarke?' asked Sunny. Captain Howard assured her that the Major would be joining the gathering shortly - that he had been called away to deal with a small administrative matter. 'I shall be very cross with him when I meet him,' said Sunny, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. 'I had hoped to see him sooner. But tell me, Captain, do you ride?'

'With the Quorn, when I can, Lady Gresham,' Captain Howard replied. 'There is little hunting to be had in London, but one does like to get away whenever possible, don't you know?'

'Oh yes. London can be so tiresome,' said Sunny and soon she, and the group of men who had gathered around her, were involved in an animated conversation involving tack, horses, stables, grooms, hounds, fences, coverts and, for all I know, stirrup-cups. Frankly, I was losing interest in the conversation.

All the same, the feeling of unease which had been haunting me ever since Sunny had decided to come to this place was beginning to dissipate. The Officer's Mess was a very grand place, but there was nothing so very sinister about it. The officers there were all fine-looking men, but more than a few of them were only boys behind their swagger, their chins soft and downy and their swords bumping clumsily against their sides. They were certainly not seasoned warriors. Slowly, progressively, I was lulled into a sense of well-being, caused at least in part by the effects of the liqueur of which Sunny had just accepted a second glass.

The talk was now of the War, and the likelihood of a Spring offensive - possibly as early as April, maybe as late as June - which would be the decisive event; securing the Holy City of Geneva in perpetuity for our Country, our People and our Faith. Sunny was expatiating on the role of the Navy in our ultimate victory when there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and landing outside. Ah! That would be the delayed Major Clarke.

The door swung wide open and every eye in the room turned to it. But it was no officer who stood there. Instead, a young woman wearing a velvet cloche hat over her short blonde hair walked in, unbuttoning her coat as she advanced towards us.

'Lady Gresham?' she said, smiling and holding out her hand.

Sunny stood up. 'Call me Sonya, please,' she said and offered her own hand in response. What happened next was so totally unexpected that it caught us both completely by surprise. We had not been told that another lady would be joining us, but neither was her appearance any particular cause for alarm. It was perfectly clear - from the way she walked, by the evident quality of her clothes, by the alertness of her daemon, by a certain look in her eyes - that she _was_ a lady. In any other circumstances, though, she would not have attracted our attention for she was not at all well-favoured or good-looking.

So it was a total shock when instead of shaking Sunny's hand, the newcomer slapped her hard on the cheek. Sunny's head jerked over to the side and the woman's right hand caught it with a vicious backhander. The diamond ring she was wearing slashed across Sunny's face leaving a livid streak behind it, beaded with blood. Sunny put her hand up to the cut and was unprepared for a stunning blow on the ear, delivered by the woman's left hand. She cried out and fell back onto her chair.

The woman ignored her cries and turned to Captain Howard. 'Clear the room,' she said. 'Now!'

'Yes, Rebecca,' said the Captain, but he hardly needed to speak. The young men were already leaving, shepherded by their older comrades. One turned, as if to stay and help us, but another leaned over to him and whispered in his ear. His face turned red and he nodded submissively. Soon there were only four people left in the room; Sunny, the young woman, Captain Howard and another officer; a fighting man with a sabre-cut under his right ear. The doors slammed to, sealing us in.

'Now, you silly little tart,' said the woman. 'What's your _real_ name?'

We were both shaking - not so much with the pain, for although Sunny's cheeks were reddened and scratched her assailant was, after all, only a woman with no more than a woman's physical strength. Sunny struggled back to her feet.

'I am Lady Sonya Gresham, as you well know,' she said putting one hand to her face. 'What the beggar-it did you do that for?'

'It _is_ a common tart just as I thought, and foul-mouthed with it,' said the other woman to Captain Howard. She turned to Sunny. 'Sit down, slut,' she said, and pushed her back down into the chair. She landed hard and her head pitched back hard against the chair's frame. We gasped with the shock of it.

'Hold her,' said the woman, and the man with the facial cut put his hands on Sunny's shoulders, making it impossible for her to stand up. She writhed and struggled in the chair but the Captain seized hold of her legs and held them tightly.

'I suppose you thought you were very clever, didn't you?' The woman sat on a leather couch, facing Sunny and well out of reach of her. Her hawk-daemon perched on the arm of the sofa and preened his feathers. I had run to my girl's shoulder and was attempting to lick her wounded cheek. 'Well? What is your name?'

Sunny said nothing - she was still stunned. The woman nodded, and Captain Howard stepped forward and struck her hard on the side of the head with his open palm. The blow landed on the same ear that the woman had struck previously and Sunny gasped with the pain and surprise of it. The force of the man's attack knocked me to the ground. I hid under the chair, shivering with agony and humiliation.

'M-M-M-oon, Driver Third Class, 040261,' Sunny said though her sobs. _Name, rank and serial number_, I thought. _We're in Enemy territory now._

'From now on, Driver Moon, Third Class, you will address me as "My Lady". You are in a very great deal of trouble. Do you know why you are in so much trouble?' The woman was sitting back now, fully in command of the situation. Sunny was clasping herself with her crossed arms.

'N-no, My Lady.'

'You are in trouble because you are a liar. A liar and an upstart.' Sunny sat up and started to speak in protest. Captain Howard struck her again. 'Speak when you're told to,' he said. The other man - the man with the scarred face - stood back with his arms folded, waiting.

'Thank you, Reginald. Last night, at Lady Margaret's Hospital, you lied. You lied to the Countess, you lied to the officers, you lied to the nurses and you lied to _me_. There was no Ladies' Carriage. You knew that perfectly well. When we arrived at that miserable, dirty place where you are employed we were turned away by some little chit of a girl. And why? Because Lady Margaret believed you when you told her that your name was Lady Gresham.

'Do you know that it is a treasonable offence to pretend to the aristocracy? I could have you taken to the Tower of London and flogged at the public whipping post for this. In my father's time you would have been hanged on the common scaffold, as an example to all the other liars and upstarts.'

I - coward that I am - hid under Sunny's chair and whimpered.

'You are not only a liar and an upstart, you are also stupid and vain. Only someone as full of herself as you would have come here tonight. No _real_ lady would have accepted an invitation to an Officer's Mess by herself, unchaperoned. You have nobody but yourself to blame for the trouble that you are in now. Well? Do you have anything to say?'

Sunny was still shaking, but she lifted her head and faced her adversary. 'Yes, I have. I'm sorry for you, My Lady,' she said.

'What?'

'Yes, sorry. You poor thing; you're so terribly plain, aren't you?' _No!_ I murmured from my hiding place. _Don't make it worse!_ Sunny ignored me. 'You couldn't get any of the men interested in you, could you? Not even the ones who were very badly hurt. No wonder they all wanted to come to Mornington with me.' Sunny turned to Captain Howard and smiled. 'Look at the two of us, Captain. Compare us. What do you think?'

I groaned inwardly. Hadn't Sunny realised? The younger officer stepped forward. 'How dare you speak to my sister like that!' He struck Sunny again, repeatedly. She curled up in her chair, trying vainly to protect her face with her hands. 'You coward!' she screamed. 'You wouldn't have done that if Gerry were here! He'd soon stop you!'

The woman motioned her brother to stop. 'Who's Gerry?' she demanded.

'My brother,' said Sunny through her tears.

'And if he were here he would beat my Reginald, would he?'

'Yes! Yes, he would. With one hand tied behind his back!'

'Then it is most fortunate that he is not here. Now then... Let's think. What would be the most appropriate punishment for a lying streetwalker who happens to think that she's pretty? A scar across the face? Oh, but I've done that already, haven't I? Perhaps a dash of vitriol? No - too extreme. This is only a child, after all. Hmmm... Yes, I know. Lend me your sword would you, Reggie?'

Captain Howard pulled his ceremonial sword from its sheath. Three feet of polished, sharpened Sheffield steel, with a moulded groove running along the centre of the blade to provide a channel for the blood the weapon drank.

Sunny's mouth fell open. 'No! No!' she gasped.

'Sit still, or I will have to hurt you.' The woman stood up and took the sword from her brother's hand. She spoke to the older man. 'Take hold of the slattern's hair would you please, Major?'

All this time I was trying to gather together what little spirit I could. I was desperately ashamed of myself. I should have been standing by my Sunny's side, defending her. It never struck me - although it should have - that Sunny had taken all our courage into herself, leaving me with none. But as the Major grasped her hair and pulled her head back over the top of the chair I felt Sunny quail, and at that moment my own sense of honour began to reassert itself. What could I do, mink-formed as I was? I was no match for the woman's hawk-daemon, nor could I hope to stand up to the large and warlike she-daemons of the men. There was only only choice left to me, but it was an impossible choice. It was too _special_.

The woman raised her brother's sword high above her head and stood by the side of the chair. Sunny's neck was stretched across the chair's antimaccassar and her bare throat was exposed to the light of the chandelier above our heads. She closed her eyes. She seemed to have decided not to struggle or fight any more, but to accept her fate. _Alfie_, she said in my private ear. _We're going to die now, aren't we_?

_Yes, we are_, I replied.

_Can you be brave for me, Alfie? I don't feel at all brave now._

_For Gerry's sake?_

_Yes, for Gerry. We'll see him, won't we?_

_Yes, my darling, I'm sure we will. I love you, Sunny._

_I love you too, Alfie._

_See you in Heaven._

_Soon?_

_Yes, very soon._

The sword rose. The sword fell. Neither of us saw it, for our eyes were closed, but we felt it. We felt it bite into Sunny's hair, close to her scalp. She screamed, and the wrenching impact of the blade forced me to open my eyes. A hank of dusky locks was hanging down from the Major's hands. The woman lifted the weapon again. She had cut through about a quarter of the rope of hair that the Major was grasping. She laughed. 'What _coarse_ hair you... beauties have!'

Sunny's scalp was on fire - I felt it. The sword swept down again, severing another handful of ebony strands. 'No! No!' Sunny cried again. That was too much for me, at last. I dashed across the carpet and leapt onto the couch where the hawk-daemon stood. I cannoned into him, dislodging him from his perch and sending us crashing to the floor in a confusion of fur and feathers. The woman flinched. She threw down the sword - it clattered on the side of an occasional table - ran over to her fallen daemon and gathered him into her arms. Her eyes blazed revenge. 'Oromanthin!' she shrieked. '_Kill him_!' She pointed to me.

The hawk-daemon raised his head. His beak was viciously hooked, his pinions razor-sharp. He could tear me to shreds in an instant. 'You bitch!' the woman said to Sunny. 'How dare you!' And again, to her daemon, 'Kill that animal!' The hawk left the woman's arms and alighted on the carpet next to me. His beak scythed through the air less than a foot from the tip of my nose.

I entered a kind of trance. My death would be our death. Our life was forfeit and it was all my fault. And another thing... the death we had thought we were facing only seconds before would have been Sunny's death, not mine, although I would have met my end by it. But now it was _my_ body that would be ripped, _my_ sinews that would be torn apart. I could not face that.

Oh Sunny, my Sunny. I have never been worthy of you.

The hawk's beak hissed past my eyes. It was now or never. I changed form.

The effects of this Change were always so dramatic, so _special_. Suddenly I was no longer face to face with the hawk, but looking down upon it. I seized the creature and held it firmly between my hands. It struggled, but could not escape from my grasp. 'Let go of her!' I shouted across the room to the Major. 'Let go of her, or I crush this daemon's throat!'

I had never Changed before such an audience. The effect was extraordinary; as if hands of ice had clutched the hearts of the people in the room, paralysing them. Nobody moved for many long seconds. Then the Major, the older, more experienced man, found his breath and spoke.

'Christ!' He named the Blasphemer. 'Jesus Christ!' Again he spoke the name that should not be spoken. 'Lord Almighty! Oh, God!' He pointed at me - in my form as a young, naked man - with a trembling hand. 'An incubus, by the Holy Spirit! A foul, disgusting, fornicating incubus!'

The King's portrait looked down upon us from its position above the fireplace. Our ruler was dressed in a Field Marshall's uniform and sat on a wooden chair placed in front of an army tent, his right hand resting upon his lioness-daemon's back. She was clad in bright armour, and her eyes regarded us with a steady gaze.

* * *

In our world, _Jolly Good Luck To The Girl Who Loves A Soldier_ was a WWI recruiting song. It was performed by Vesta Tilley, a male impersonator who was best known for her portrayal of Burlington Bertie From Bow. 


	10. The Chain

_The Chain_

_People used to love to hear her laugh, see her smile,  
That's how she got her name.  
Since that sad affair, she lost her smile, changed her style,  
Somehow she's not the same._

Jack Segal & Marvin Fisher

I had never known anything could hurt so much. I mean, apart from the horror of knowing that I was about to have my head cut off; but that hurt in a different way. It was a mental pain. I remember that I was thinking that it was all happening too quickly. I couldn't possibly be going to die yet, I was much too young. I said my goodbyes to Alfie and he - I don't know, it's still confused in my mind - he said goodbye to me. Was it horror I was feeling? Yes, but it was sorrow too. I loved my life, and I hated to leave it. I was already mourning myself.

That was the other thing - it was so pointless. Here we were in the Chelsea Barracks, where we should have been perfectly safe. The King's Guard was an elite regiment - everybody knew that. Only gentlemen from the very best schools could join it. How could this have happened? How could I be about to be killed because I'd told a few silly little fibs? How had it all got so far out of hand?

The nurse - I still didn't know her name - brought the sword down as hard as she could. The blade thrummed and whistled as it passed through the air. And then... and then, instead of the swift pain and the empty hollowness and the gush of blood I'd been expecting, I felt a terrific tearing at my scalp and my head was jerked even further back over the chair than it was already. It was like when Gerry used to pull on my pigtails when I was small, only ten times worse. No, make that a hundred times worse. I beat on the arms of the chair with my hands.

Then it happened again - the swoosh of the blade and the wrenching at my hair - and this time I couldn't help screaming. And then Alfie sprang into action. I could have cheered out aloud as he went for the hawk. But then, when the woman retaliated and it was our life or his and Alfie changed his form and seized her daemon... It was awful. I felt so exposed. I felt as if I had been stripped naked, flung over one of the sofas, and stretched out for all the men in the room to look at. They knew. Our enemies knew all about us, as hardly anybody had known before. Gerry, Mabel. I'd told them. Maybe one or two others had guessed; Captain Lowther for one.

And there we were. Alfie hanging on to the nurse's daemon and struggling to maintain his human form. The nurse and the two officers were frozen in place. I was the only person who could move, so I did. I stood up - more of my hair fell out and landed on the carpet - and picked up the sword. I walked over to where Alfie stood and put my hand on his shoulder. I kissed his cheek as I had so many times before when we had been _special_ together The nurse found her breath at last. 'Filth, filth, filth,' she said over and over again, retching and heaving as if she were only keeping herself from vomiting by a terrific effort of will.

'Listen,' I said. 'We're going to leave now.' I lightly touched the hawk-daemon's wing-tips. The woman's lips were flecked with foam. She was bent over, with her hands on her knees, shuddering with disgust. She spoke, and her voice was strained and scarcely audible.

'Stop her. Please stop her, or let her go. Oh please, _do_ something!'

The Major crossed himself. So he believed in the old ways, did he? That was useful to know.

'Alfie and I are going home now. We don't like it here. It smells nasty, and there are heretics about.' I looked straight at the Major and pointed the sword at him. I don't know how I kept so calm. I wasn't feeling calm, that was for sure. I was on the verge of disgracing myself as the nurse had done. But I was holding on to Alfie, and he to me, and we had her daemon in our power. 'Come on Alfie.' I turned to the door. 'You lot can stay here.'

Alfie led the way, still holding the hawk tightly. It was struggling less now and I warned Alfie not to slacken his grip. I followed him out of the room; that richly furnished, treacherous place. I pulled the door to behind me. There was no lock or key that we could see. We crossed the landing and made for the head of the stairs. Suddenly there came from behind the door a howl of intense, despairing pain.

'Sunny,' said Alfie. 'Do you want to murder her?' Oh. Oh, of course. We couldn't carry Oromanthin much further without causing the nurse even more distress than we had already.

'She bloody well deserves it.'

'Maybe she does. But nobody's been very badly hurt yet. Why kill her?'

'My hair! My face!'

'Your hair will grow back. Your face wasn't badly scratched. Are we going to take her life for _that_?'

Alfie's face was very beautiful. I know I don't have to say whom he looked like or whose voice I heard when he spoke.

'If we kill her or drive her mad there'll never be an end to it. Do you want to get us sucked into a feud - between our families, or between the King's Guard and the Ambulance Brigade? That's what'll happen if she dies or loses her mind. Do you want to help the Enemy by destroying our own forces? We'd be traitors if we did that.'

'But she... Oh Alfie. I suppose you're right.'

'I often am.'

'All right.' I raised my voice. 'You! Nurse! Out of there! You're coming with us!'

The door opened slowly and the woman, her pale face streaked with tears and her coat stained with bile, emerged onto the landing.

'You're our safe-conduct out of here. You can walk ten feet behind us. Come any closer or make any sound, and dear Oromanthin gets his neck squeezed. I suggest you keep up with us. And tell your brother and his friend to stay put until you get back.'

The nurse nodded. 'Good girl! Come along.' Slowly, so slowly, step by step, we descended the staircase. On the walls, armies did battle and stern-faced generals kept watch. I held the sword out straight and kept a look-out, swinging it from side to side. I wondered where the other officers who had left the mess had gone.

'Careful with that thing!' Alfie said.

'Same to you,' I replied.

We reached the bottom of the stairs and entered the passageway which led to the entrance. If it had seemed endless before it was doubly endless now. 'Come on! Faster!'I said to Alfie.

'Keep listening,' he replied. 'We're going quite fast enough already.'

The outstretched sword cast sweeping shadows as we passed the corridor lights, threatening to lop off the heads of the troopers who were pictured in the photograms to either side of us. I had a sudden thought and Alfie and I stopped and backed into an alcove. 'You,' I said to the nurse. You go first. Tell the man on the desk that everything is in order and that he is not to prevent us from leaving.' The woman, still shaking with terror, passed us. I smelled the puke on her clothes, like a child or a sick cat.

Only a little way further to go. The nurse reached the desk and leaned forward. We stood three or four yards behind her. She exchanged a few words with the sergeant and we heard his reply. 'Yes, m'lady, that'll be quite satisfactory.' He lifted the desk-flap and stood by the door. 'Come along now.' The exit was in sight. Alfie prepared to let go of the hawk-daemon and I tensed my muscles to make a dash for it. Only a few more yards. I could see the street-lights outside the door. We were safe - I'd run off to the left and try to find a late-running taxicab.

And then the orderly - the mute, noiseless orderly - stepped out from the shadows behind us and threw a chain of antique burnished iron over our heads. Alfie screamed and bright red welts appeared on his naked skin where the iron links touched it. I was startled. I didn't understand what was happening. Why was the chain hurting Alfie so much?

I didn't understand it, but I could see that we were trapped so long as Alfie remained man-formed. _Change! Change form!_ I cried, but it was no use. Alfie was frozen, unable to move. The orderly looped the chain around us again. Alfie's paralysed hands released the hawk which flew, mewing with delight, to his mistress' arms.

My daemon was twisting and writhing in agony. His body, pulled next to mine by the chain, trembled and shook. His pain - our pain - was increasing by the second, rapidly becoming too much for us to bear. Tendrils of white vapour were rising from the chain's links and coils and my own clothes were starting to smoulder. The orderly flung another loop, and another, over our heads and pulled them tight. Alfie was wreathed in dense, evil-smelling smoke now. It caught in my throat, acrid and fierce. I could see the chain glowing red with heat, digging into him, branding him with slave-marks. Somewhere nearby a girl was screaming, her mouth dry and raw with panic, shackles of fire biting into her flesh.

_Change, Alfie! Change! Change back!_ I cried again. But he couldn't change. He was bound with an iron chain and somehow it was keeping him locked into his man-form. He fell to his knees, and I fell with him. Overhead, the nurse stood looking down on us, gloating. The Major stood behind her. 'Damn incubus,' he said. 'Burn, you foul _thing_.'

Alfie and I tipped over onto our sides. He was moving only feebly now. The chain was deeply embedded in him, still burning, still glowing. The sword had become lodged between me and the floor but I was still clutching it in my frozen right hand.

I tried to speak to my daemon. _Alfie, my love?_

No reply.

_Alfie!_

_Sunny_. I could hardly hear him. My eyes were blurring over and my hearing had become indistinct.

_Do you know why the chain is hurting you?_

_No._

_We'll have to find out sometime._

_That's a good idea. Yes._ His voice faded away. A black cloud fell across my eyes for a brief moment.

'What the hell is going on here?' It was a new voice, loud and authoritative.

'Sir.' That was the major. 'We found this woman and her... daemon in the building.'

'I see. And why are you treating them like this?'

'Sir. They are unclean. Do you not see?'

'I see a girl whom you have bound with a chain and thrown to the floor. I see her daemon lying next to her. I see nothing unclean.'

'But sir...'

'Quiet, Hargreaves.' A hand reached down to me. I took hold of it and it helped me to my feet. The chain rattled to the ground. Alfie nestled in the crook of my arm, mink-formed again.

'What is your name, child?' The speaker was a man in middle age, with a silver moustache and grey eyes.

'Sunny... I mean Sonya Moon, sir.'

'And why are you here?'

'I was invited to a soiree by Major Clarke, sir.'

'Hmmm.' The man rested his hand in his chin. I could see a much younger man standing next to him; a junior officer. The orderly was nowhere to be seen. 'There is no Major Clarke in the King's Guard, Sonya. I fear that you are mistaken, or have been misled. Where do you live?' His voice was kindly, but firm.

'Ambulance Depot Number Twelve, sir. In Mornington.'

'Colonel,' the nurse's brother said. 'This woman was...'

'Silence! Do not say any more! It is enough, Howard, that I have been brought here at this hour to find two of my officers engaged in tormenting a young woman. Quite enough. Who is this other person?' He indicated the nurse.

'She is my sister, sir. She is a nurse at Lady Margaret's Hospital.'

'Is she, now? Well, Nurse Howard, your presence is no longer required here. My sergeant will order you a taxicab.' The man on the desk picked up his telephone and spoke into it.

'Hargreaves, Howard. I will speak to you in my quarters tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. Dismissed!' The two officers left, followed by the orderly and the younger man. The colonel turned to me and lowered his voice a little.

'As for you, my dear, I think that you had better leave. You must see that. There is something about you that I do not understand. Something... odd. I saw something just now - only for a fraction of a second, mind - which disturbed me very much. I do not think that you should come here again.'

'No, sir. Certainly not, sir!' Alfie was beginning to stir in my arms. I desperately wanted to talk to him.

'Then go. Go now!'

'Yes, sir.' I gathered my ruined party dress around myself and passed through the door into the street. It was dark. There was not a light to be seen, except for a yellow flare escaping from the barracks door; and that was quickly extinguished. It was very cold, and it was late at night, and I was many miles from home and all alone.

Or so I thought. 'What on earth have you done to your hair? What the bloody beggary bollocks have you been up to?' said Nancy.

'Don't talk like that!' said Mabel.

_Dear Gerry,_

_I hardly know where to begin. God's Holy Spirit, but I've been such a fool! Such a stupid, idiotic fool._

_Why didn't I see it? It was such an obvious trap. Alfie knew it. He tried to stop me. And he's been so hurt. We both have, but it was worse for him._

_I've cut my hair off. I know, you used to like teasing me about it, and you pulled on it, you beast. But I've done it as a penance. Oh, all right, and because it was in the most unholy state after that Howard woman had hacked at it._

_When I say off, I mean off. All of it. You wouldn't know me. My head looks tiny without it. Serves me bloody well right for being a silly little tart. Nobody'll look at me now. I'm perfectly safe._

_Oh Gerry, he won't talk to me. Alfie. He doesn't say anything to me any more. Not a dicky bird._

_He hates me. I know it. He hates me for what I did to him._

_In despair,_

_Driver Moon_

I still had the sword. I hadn't realised I was carrying it until Mabel pointed it out to me as we sat in the back of the horse-taxicab they had hired to rescue me from the Chelsea Barracks. 'You should return it,' she said.

'No! No! No! I'm not going back there!' The cab driver turned his head at my outburst. 'Now, miss,' he said. 'Don't frighten my Blossom.'

'Sorry,' I said. I held the sword up and looked at it. It was a beautiful thing, despite its deadliness. Polished steel and grained leather. Gerry had had one like it, but it was at the bottom of the German Ocean now. I turned to Mabel. 'It's mine. I deserve it, after... that.'

'What happened in there? Won't you tell us?' asked Nancy.

'I can't tell you. Not yet.' I was beginning to shake all over. Alfie lay, mute, in my lap.

'Mabel knows.' I couldn't say any more than that.

'Oh. Don't cry, Sunny. Please.'

'No, Mabel. Let her. It's better if she does.'

I returned my uniform cap and flak helmet to the stores and indented for new ones, a whole size smaller. My head felt infernally itchy when the hair tried to grow out again, so I went to the Camperdown branch of Timothy White's and bought a cutthroat razor. Every night before I went to bed, I rubbed the expensive scented soap I'd got from Floris into my scalp and shaved it as closely as I could. After a while I developed a rash and had to change to proper shaving soap. Sometimes one of the Three helped me.

When I wasn't on duty or eating or trying (in vain) to sleep I sat in the day room with the sword resting across my knees and held Alfie in both hands, looking into his eyes and talking to him. Physically - Miss Selborne would have said _metaphysically_ - there was nothing wrong. The marks the chain had carved into his man-form were absent now that he was in his normal state. His lovely soft fur was unmarked. I stroked it over and over and whispered to him. _Alfie. I love you. It's all right now. We're safe._ But he didn't reply.

I told nobody about him. Not even Nancy and Mabel. They were worried about me, I could see. Nancy's face when she saw what I'd done to my hair! Mabel threatened to cut hers off as well, but I managed to stop her. 'You weren't such a bloody fool as I was,' I said.

'You mustn't say that,' said Nancy.

'Yes I must. I was a stupid idiot and I don't deserve friends like you, coming out in the middle of the night the way you did.'

'Sunny, Sunny.' Nancy glanced at Alfie who was clinging onto my right shoulder. Her Adolphus blinked his eyes at me. 'You can't go on punishing yourself like this.'

_Is that what it is, Alfie? Are you punishing me?_

I went to the library and asked for the Encyclopaedia. 'All of it?' asked the girl behind the counter. 'No. Just H to K.' They brought it over to me and I opened to to the Is. Here it was:

_**Incubus:** In medieval European folklore, the incubus is an evil spirit who visits women in their sleep to lie with them in ghostly sexual intercourse. The woman who falls victim to an incubus will not awaken, although may experience it in a dream. Should she get pregnant the child will grow inside her as any normal child, except that it will possess supernatural capabilities. Usually the child grows into a person of evil intent or a powerful black theologian. Legend has it that the magician Merlyn was the result of the union of an incubus and a nun. A succubus is the female variety, and she concentrates herself on men. According to one legend, the incubus and the succubus were fallen angels. According to another an incubus is a deformed daemon, taking man-shape and defiling its human host or another woman._

Evil? Deformed? Was that Alfie? Was that me? And why had the iron chain affected him so drastically? It seemed that the Encyclopaedia didn't know all there was to be known. Or it wasn't telling.

Weeks passed. The lull continued. We concentrated on keeping ourselves in readiness for the next big push which, as it was March now, could not be far off. There were exercises to do, and maintenance, and repainting the depot walls and woodwork. I learned more about the workings of gas-engines. Now there was no chance of my locks getting caught in the mechanicals I was allowed into the workshops. I was permitted to do some of the easier tasks, like changing the oil or greasing the axle-bearings.

I even went out with the Three; to the pub or for a stroll up Primrose Hill. People stared at me, with my bald head, but there were stranger sights to be seen in wartime London and they soon looked away. One day we went to Hampstead Heath again and I looked around for the old man who had startled me by the Ponds, but he wasn't there.

I kept the sword with me constantly.

One day in April Captain Lowther ordered the garage to be cleared. We ran the vehicles out into the yard and lined them up. Two of the girls set up a podium at one end. I wondered what was going on. Surely not another party?

No, it was not. At three o'clock we were called into the empty garage, all twenty-five of us. We sat on three rows of chairs and sofas brought down from the day room. Captain Lowther stood on the podium, next to an easel. As the last girl entered the garage one of the mechanics bolted the door behind her. This was something serious, then, and we all looked up expectantly.

'Now,' said the Captain. 'I'm sure you're wondering why I've called you here. The quicker among you will have guessed that it is something to do with this big Push that the rumour-mongers have been talking about for the past month or so. Well,' and she turned to the easel which was displaying a map of the European mainland, 'You're right.

'This briefing is being delivered simultaneously at all the Ambulance Brigade depots in London. Ladies, the Push has begun! Clearly, I could not have told you of this in advance, for reasons of security. Our forces began moving towards Geneva at dawn this morning and initial reports say that they have met with only token opposition. We are on the way to liberating and securing the Holy City.

'I say; only token opposition. This happy state will, alas, not continue. We can expect that the Enemy will fight back, using all the means at his disposal. There will be casualties.'

My heart leapt in my chest. Alfie roused himself and pricked up his ears. We were going to join the battle!

'Ma'am?' I called out. 'Are we going to Frankland?' The other girls looked around and whispered to each other.

'Quiet! Wait until I have finished, Driver Moon. I, and the other depot commanders, have been warned to expect an influx of wounded men very soon now. Our recent period of preparation will stand us in very good stead when that happens. We will be stretched, ladies. Very stretched. But there is more. More has been asked of us. There will be a need for an advance Brigade, based abroad. This Brigade will be newly constituted and each of the depots has been asked to put forward the names of two or three of its best members to crew it.

'Let me make one thing perfectly clear to you. The work will be unpleasant and dangerous - far more so than anything you have experienced here in the comfort and relative safety of Mornington. I do not demand that any of you go to Frankland, or wherever the new Brigade may operate. I have compiled no list of crew-members to send. I am asking for volunteers only.

'Anyone who goes from here to the new Brigade will carry the name of the Twelfth with her. This is _my_ Depot, ladies, and I am very proud of it. I am very proud of you. If you put your name forward for the advance unit it will do you great credit, but if you do not it will not be held against you. None of you signed up for foreign service when you joined us.

'But - I am also very jealous of our reputation. It does not automatically follow that if you put your name forward I will allow you to go. Some of you are essential to the running of the Depot and cannot be spared. Some of you are only recent arrivals and do not have enough experience of the Service to go abroad. Some of you, while performing well here in London, would not be suitable for overseas service.' Deuteronomy's eyes looked at us intently.

'That is all. If you wish to volunteer, please present yourself at my office at four o'clock today. In any event, prepare yourselves for action.'

I wasn't going to wait until four o'clock. I pulled out the sword from my belt and held it high above my head. It glinted and flashed in the arc-lights.

'Captain, ma'am!' I cried. 'Send me!' _Yes!_ said Alfie.


	11. Pompey

_Pompey_

_I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide,  
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied._

John Masefield

'All three of you?'

'Yes, Ma'am. We'd make a great team, don't you think?'

Captain Lowther let her hands fall onto the desk with a thump. A paper fluttered in the out-tray. 'Moon, you are incorrigible!' Funny. That was exactly what my teachers used to say.

'But, Ma'am...'

'Yes, Avon?'

'Patterson and I will look after Sunny... Driver Moon.'

'I've no doubt you will. However, that is not your job. Driver Moon should be capable of looking after herself.'

'I _can_ look after myself!'

'With a little help.' Thank you, Nancy.

'You and that ridiculous sword?' I flushed. Perhaps it would have been better to have left it in the dormitory instead of hanging it from my belt.

'Yes, Ma'am.'

The Captain ignored me. 'Avon, Patterson, thank you for coming to see me. I am very glad that you have volunteered for these special duties. Both of you are, I am convinced, sufficiently capable and mature to acquit yourself well. Now; you are not the only crew-members to have volunteered for overseas service. I must talk to the others too.' Four or five girls had been ahead of us in the queue at the Captain's office door and another eight or nine were still waiting outside.

'Again, thank you. I will post the names of those whom I have selected on the notice-board at six o'clock.'

'But what about me?' I said.

Captain Lowther sighed, and her Deuteronomy shook his head. 'No, Driver Moon. You are too young. Far too young. So young that I could not send you abroad even if you were actually twenty-one years old, rather than only sixteen.' She looked up to Mabel and Nancy and nodded. They took the hint and left the room.

'Sit down.' I did as I was told. Captain Lowther rested her head in her hands for a moment.

'Sonya, please don't take this amiss. You're a very bright girl, and I don't doubt for a moment that you're a very brave one too. But... you've still got so much growing up left to do.'

How dare she say that! I flared up 'Ma'am! Ma'am! That's not fair! I do my job. I work just as hard as everyone else. I'm a good driver... a better one, anyway.'

'Yes, you've learned a great deal since you joined us.' The Captain ran her hands through her stiff hair. 'But you still have so much to learn...'

I stared at her. 'What, Ma'am? What have I got to learn?'

'Oh, Sonya. There's so much you don't understand yet. There is so much evil out there in the world that you don't know about...'

I wanted to say, _I know. I've seen it_, but I didn't want to tell her about the Chelsea Barracks. I'd get Mabel and Nancy into terrible trouble if I did. I thought about the young officer who'd saved me. How brave he'd been! I wondered what Captain Howard and Major Hargreaves had done to him after I'd gone. They'd have accused him of betraying them. I hoped he was all right. I'd have liked to thank him and give him a peck on the cheek.

'And Sonya, I'd hate to lose you. Please stay here with me, and let your hair grow out and start talking properly to Alpharintus again.' Deuteronomy and Captain Lowther exchanged glances.

So she'd noticed. Again I wanted to say that we would be fine so long as we could go to Frankland, but then I'd have to tell her what had happened in Chelsea, and I couldn't do that.

'Is that it then, Ma'am?

'Yes, Driver Moon, that is it. Dismissed!' I stood up and left the room, being careful not to let the door bang behind me.

Mabel and Nancy were chosen, just as I had known they would be. I was not. We all stood around the notice board, letting it sink in. Some of us looked fed-up at not being chosen. Others looked relieved, even the ones who'd volunteered. The Captain would not have been taken in by them. Why had they put themselves forward if they didn't want to go?

_Shame_, said Alfie. _It's no substitute for courage. I should know_.

_Silly daemon. I love you just the same. Now, shush!_

Mabel and Nancy walked away from the notice board and I joined them. The others watched us. Some of them patted my friends on the shoulder as they passed. 'Come on,' I said. 'Pub's open!'

We sat on a bench in the corner by the pub door and drank quinine and jenniver with lots of ice.

'Jolly old QJs,'said Mabel, putting down her second glass. I signalled to the barmaid to come over and serve us. We'd come to an arrangement with the landlord of the Broker's Arms. He wouldn't refuse to let us into his pub if we'd agree not to go up to the bar and demand service. I'm sure he still thought we were ladies of dubious repute, even though we didn't dress that way. Nor, the last time I heard, did streetwalkers wear Brigade uniform or sing rugby songs.

I thought briefly of Jessie, whom I'd met on my first day in London. Would she think any more of me now than she had then? Somehow I doubted it.

'Do you know when you're leaving?' I asked.

'Tuesday,' Nancy answered. It was Sunday evening now. Only another whole day, then.

'I've been rostered with Maureen Wareham and Julia Matravers.'

'That's nice,' said Mabel. 'They're good, very good. I've worked with them. You'll learn a lot from them, if you listen to what they tell you and keep your eyes open.'

'That's what everyone says.'

'They're right.'

'I know. But...'

'Yes?'

'But... you know.' I took a hefty swig of jenniver and held Alfie close to my heart, for comfort.

'Yes, Sunny. I know.'

'We'll write to you, sweetheart.'

'I know you will. But it'll be on those awful official postcards, won't it? "I am / am not well. Cross out that which does not apply." All that stuff.'

'Yes, I suppose it will. Only officers are allowed to write proper uncensored letters.'

'And we're not officers. Hooray!'

'Cheers,' I said, and lifted my glass. My sword rattled against the side of the bench.

_Dear Gerry,_

_Mabel and Nancy leave tomorrow morning. They've got to be at Agincourt Station by ten o'clock to catch the Pompey train. Then they muster up with the rest of the Advance Brigade and embark at six for Frankland._

_Of course I know that's not how it'll really work. You told me all about that before. Best laid plans, and all that. Even in the Senior Service! So they've laid in stocks of sandwiches and cake and ginger beer. We've all chipped in. You should see the way their packs bulge! They've been given the day off to get ready, so our ambulance has stayed in the yard._

_As for me, it's up at six and join Maureen and Julia. I expect they'll put me on scrubbing duties._

_All my love,_

_Sunny_

That evening I slipped out of the depot after supper and went to see the artist who'd once turned my photogram into a recruiting poster. I had a little job for him. He was intrigued by what I asked him to do, and agreed to assist me for the outrageous sum of ten pounds. I was a good thing I'd already collected that month's allowance from Coutts.

He earned his money, though. Now I look back on it I can't help thinking that I can't have been the only person he'd helped out in that particular way. I don't blame him for that, even though it was illegal. I turned to face him as Alfie and I left his top-floor flat. 'Thanks. Goodbye,' I said.

'Good luck,' he replied and closed the door silently behind him. I crept down his stairs as quietly as I could and was back in the depot by ten thirty. Not everybody was asleep but I was able to return the things I'd borrowed without anybody noticing.

Three o'clock in the morning and I still wasn't able to get to sleep. Alfie had been almost completely silent during my preparations. I didn't understand. I thought he would be talking to me more. I thought he'd approve of what I was doing. It hadn't been his idea, but even so... He could encourage me a little, couldn't he?

Courage was what I needed now, lots of it. I was shaking. I'd already been to the privy twice in the last hour. I couldn't go again, even though I wanted to. I'd wake somebody up.

_Alfie, Alfie. I've got the squits._

_Put a cork in it, then._

_Alfie!_ I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. _Why are you being so horrible to me?_

_Am I?_

_You know you are._

_And you're never nasty to me, I suppose._

_I..._

_Never?_

_Hardly ever._ We laughed.

_That's better_, I said. _You know we've_ got _to do this, don't you?_

_No, I don't know that._

_But when I volunteered you said yes. That made me so happy, Alfie._

_But the Captain said no._

_I know._

_And that means no._

_But..._

_And she gave some very good reasons. Why_ did _you volunteer, Sunny?_

_Because I want to help! Because I want to stick with Mabel and Nancy!_

_Is that really it?_

_Yes._

_And not just to show off? You like showing off, don't you?_

_I... no..._

_And look where that got us. I can still feel it, you know. I can still feel the chain, biting into me. It burns me..._

_Oh, Alfie!_ I held him. Then, after a while he said:

_Is it... is it because we want to die? Is that it?_

I sat up in bed. The springs creaked, and the girl next to me muttered in her sleep.

_No, Alfie! No!_ He pressed on mercilessly:

_Is it because we want to die and be with Gerry? Like we thought was going to happen in Chelsea?_

_Alfie. That's not fair!_

_Maybe not. But is it true?_

I turned over and buried my face in the pillow. Was it true? Did I want to kill myself?

_It wouldn't be fair on the others. They'd try and save us. We'd be putting their lives at risk too. Letting them down._

_You're right. Oh, Alfie? What are we doing? Other people - normal people - don't argue like this. I'm sure they don't. It's as if we were two separate people, not one. We weren't always like this, were we? Why can't we be together again?_

_Because we're special?_

_That must be it. Oh, hell!_ I was soaking the pillow with my tears, but I didn't care. Alfie lay next to me and nuzzled my ear.

_But Sunny..._

_Yes?_

_So long as we love each other..._

_Yes. We'll get by so long as we love each other._ I put my arm around him. For a moment I thought he was going to Change, but we both thought better of it.

Timing was everything. It all depended on things going wrong.

As I'd told Gerry would happen Maureen Wareham turfed me out of bed at six and sent me down to the garage to fettle our vehicle. 'Breakfast when you've finished!' she said, and waltzed off to the refectory. I muttered under my breath, but Alfie reminded me about not letting people down, so I checked the water and oil, pumped up the tyres and ran a mop over the seats and the floor in the back.

By the time I got to breakfast the place was packed. Mabel and Nancy were there with their kitbags standing in the corner so I took my usual place next to them.

'Sunny!' said Mabel. 'You're letting your hair grow again.'

'I got tired of all the funny looks,' I said. Alfie winked at Hal. I'd still be getting a few strange glances until it reached a reasonable length. Right now I wanted to scratch it.

'You're a creature of mindless fashion,' Nancy mocked. I grinned at her.

We finished breakfast and I helped them carry their bags out into the yard. 'I'll drive,' I said.

'No!' Mabel held up her arms in horror.

'You taught me everything I know, Driver Patterson,' I said. 'Hop in!'

We drove out of the yard with Captain Lowther and all the girls of the Twelfth waving their handkerchiefs behind us and cheering fit to burst.

I wanted to play fair. I'd stacked Nancy's and Mabel's bags in the back of the ambulance for them. It was our vehicle, not Maureens' and Julia's. They'd be able to set out without me. Meanwhile I'd arranged with Captain Lowther to do a pickup at Crècy Station once I'd dropped Mabel and Nancy off at Agincourt.

There was no rush, so I didn't overcook it as we crossed London. Ambulance traffic had priority, so taxis, carts, vans, private cars and autobuses pulled over to the side of the road to let us pass. I didn't even have to ring the bell.

'The Three set out,' said Nancy.

'But the One comes back,' I added.

'We'll be back, too' Mabel said. We were sitting in a row in the front of the vehicle. 'You wait and see.'

'Have you got all your papers?'

'Yes.'

'Travel warrant, identity card, order-slip?'

'Yes, yes, yes. Don't worry about us.'

'But I do. Of course I do,' I gulped, and nearly drove into the kerb. We crossed the Agincourt Bridge and looped round into the station yard. 'Hang on,' I said, jumping out. 'I'll get your things.'

I leapt up into the back and handed down the kitbags. We embraced in a great big Three Hug and then, as the taxicabs behind us were becoming impatient, I said goodbye and au revoir to my friends. It was a quarter to ten.

'Come along, miss!' said a driver, sweating in his cab. 'I haven't got all day!' Neither had I. I gave him a wave and a smile - which brightened up his day no end, I'm sure - and drove out of the yard.

To Crècy Station?

No fear!

I dumped the ambulance by the Old Adelaide theatre. I couldn't leave it too far away, because I had a lot of heavy stuff to carry. Agincourt Station is huge and it has many entrances and exits. I planned to enter the station at the opposite end from the main stairs where I had dropped Mabel and Nancy.

I hadn't planned on the station being so densely packed with people. I reached the top of the narrow staircase which leads up from the Agincourt and City line to face a solid sea of khaki. Soldiers were pushing and shoving on all sides, their daemons squealing and barking in distress. There was a definite sense of panic in the air. It soon infected Alfie and me.

The clock was standing on ten o'clock before I even found out what platform the Pompey train was due to leave from. It was ten past before I was able to fight my way to the gate, with my kitbag trailing along behind me. What if I was too late? 'Pompey?' I said to the ticket-collector. 'Is this train for Pompey?'

'That's right, miss. But this is a military train. You'll have to wait for the next civilian one. That's not until one. Move aside please, and let these people through.' He looked over my shoulder. 'Next!'

'Please, Goodsir,' I pleaded. 'I've got my papers.' I thrust a sheaf of documents in his face and held my breath. He took them from me and shuffled through them. 'Hmmm. Let's see. Driver Moon?'

'Yes, that's me.'

'For embarkation at Pompey?'

'Yes, Goodsir.'

He shook his head. My heart sank.

'Don't you know anything, miss?'

'Goodsir?'

'Don't you know to keep your order-slip out of sight? I'm not meant to see them.' He pointed to one of the documents I'd given him. 'You won't last five minutes in Frankland if you don't pay attention to your orders. I should report you to your CO. What you've done is a gross breach of national security.'

'Oh.' My face fell. This was it. I'd be sent back home in disgrace. The gateman shook his head.

'Oh, go on.' He handed me my papers. 'Get along with you.'

'Thank you, Goodsir.'

'And pay more attention in future!'

I ran onto the platform. The engine driver was blowing his whistle and the porters were slamming the doors. I threw my baggage and myself into the nearest carriage. It was full, of course.

'Hello!' said a lance-corporal with a cat-daemon and a badly scarred cheek. 'What 'ave we got 'ere?'

_Oh, good heavens_.

It was all right. It was perfectly all right. They couldn't have been nicer, those enlisted men with their battered faces and their unkempt daemons. One of them looked after my bag, and another gave me his seat and yet another offered me a cigarette.

'You know what?' said the lance-corporal as we settled down and the train scraped and clanked its way out of the station. 'You remind me of someone.'

'Eleanor Liss?' I asked. She was an up and coming operetta singer, dark-haired and very pretty.

'Nah! Me Auntie Gert. She had all 'er 'air cut off. Just before they sent 'er down fer petty larceny. She 'ad scabies too!'

I joined in the laughter. I couldn't help it. _That's better,_ said Alfie.

The train crawled down the line to the coast. I shared out the food I'd saved in my bag. The soldiers offered me their corned-beef sandwiches and sugary chai. 'You need feedin' up, miss!' a shy man in the far corner said, offering me a mint humbug. It was the only thing he said all day.

We passed through Guildford, with its Great Basilica standing high on the hill overlooking the town. We trundled by the Hog's Back and then waited for ages outside Petersfield station and baked in the midday sun. I looked out of the window at a row of nasty tin huts facing on to the railway. Who lived in them, I wondered. Who spent every day of their lives in these miserable shacks; living there or working there, looking out of their mean windows at the trains passing by and wishing they could simply get on one and go away for ever and ever and ever and never have to come back?

_Even to war?_ asked Alfie

_I don't know._

I took the sword out of my kitbag and showed it to them. 'You an officer, miss?' asked a gaunt-faced private with a twitching rat-daemon.

'Me? No! But a girl's got to be able to look after herself, hasn't she? Begging your pardons, of course.' I beamed at the assembled men. 'Now, who knows how to play poker?' I pulled a pack of cards from my tunic pocket and riffled them purposefully.

By the time we reached the town of Pompey I was in profit by two boxes of matches and forty Woodbines. Not a bad result.

Pompey! I'd been here any number of times when I was a kid. Sometimes we were only passing through on the way to our holiday home on the Isle of Albany, but usually we came to look at the ships. That was Daddy's doing, mostly, but I could always tell how much Gerry was enthralled by the sight of the harbour, full of vessels large and small. A lot of them were fishing craft or day-tripper boats. We despised them, naturally. There was only one kind of ship we wanted to see. Warships!

Because Daddy was a King's Minister, but also because he had served in the Royal Navy, it only took a quiet word in the harbourmaster's ear and a steam launch would be detailed for us. We could use it for as long as we wanted - all day if we liked - and the smartly-dressed sailors who manned it enjoyed showing us around the Fleet. 'That's the old _Viceroy of Serque_, that is, in for a refit,' they might say as we passed under the great looming stern of a first-class battleship. Gerry would lean over the side of the boat to get a closer look. He could tell you all about each ship; how many men she carried, how many guns she bore, her range and the power of her engines, how many loaves of bread were baked each day in her ovens and which battles she had fought in. He would wave to the men on board and they would wave back to him.

Daddy would smile broadly at Gerry's obvious enthusiasm and Mummy, if she came with us, would smile too, only less so. Alfie and I would sit in the stern and admire everything we saw with equal pleasure.

Once I remember Daddy's old ship was in port. HMS _Undaunted_ - a heavy cruiser with eight twelve-inch guns and ten torpedo tubes. She lay long and grey and low in the water; with three rakish funnels and a high wireless mast atop all, fluttering with signal flags. When we arrived at Pompey that day we found a cutter already waiting for us at the dockside. Daddy and Gerry raced down the steps and jumped aboard the boat. Mummy and I followed more slowly though my heart was thumping with excitement and I was pulling at her hand to hurry up. We cast off, dashed across the choppy harbour water to the _Undaunted,_ and tied up next to the set of steps that was attached to the side of her hull. As we reached the top of them the boatswain's pipe trilled, and a line of officers and ratings stood ready to receive us. The captain stood at the end of the line and saluted Daddy. Daddy saluted him back and shook his hand warmly. Gerry copied him. Then the officers and men bowed to Mummy and me (I blushed bright red. I was only five or six years old and nobody had ever bowed to me before) and took us down to the wardroom, where there was a great mahogany table laden with glass, china and silver plate. It was used by the ship's surgeon as an operating table in times of war, Gerry told me gleefully. I squealed in horrified delight while mouse-formed Alfie hid in the apron pocket of my pinafore dress. We took our places and ate, and drank the King's health sitting down; our time-honoured right as seamen of the Brytish Empire and defenders of her sacred shores.

Oh Gerry! That was always going to be the life for you; going down to the sea in ships. There was never any doubt about it, was there?

The railway station was seething with soldiers, sailors and military policemen. Somewhere in the crowd were Nancy and Mabel. _Better not let them see us_, said Alfie.

_Not yet, anyway_.

_But we'd better not let them out of our sight either._

_We've got our papers, Alfie. They'll tell us where to report to._

_I'm worried._

_Silly daemon! Don't worry, we'll be all right._

Day by day, step by step, we were beginning to get back on our old footing with each other. I was gladder than I could say.

I followed the slow-moving line out of the station, dragging my kitbag behind me. This was going to be quite tricky. The crush of people was making Alfie jittery; it was affecting me and I was beginning to feel panicky again. The order-slip that I'd had copied by my artist friend (along with the rest of my forged papers) told me to muster in front of the station entrance, but I couldn't risk being seen. I stood behind an iron pillar and watched.

Our uniforms were like the ones the soldiers wore except that they were made of grey material instead of khaki. That difference should have helped me spot my friends, but there were so many servicemen pushing and shoving that the girls, who were naturally smaller than the men, tended to disappear into the general confusion. I looked around, trying to spot the distinctive caps we were when not on active duty. Surely I'd be able to spot somebody? I searched the thronging mass desperately.

When I finally saw them it was too late. An autobus had edged its way to the far corner of the forecourt, and across a sea of khaki-clad heads I saw Mabel with her ginger hair, standing at the back door and loading her kitbag into it. Nancy was next to her. I wanted to shout, 'Mabel! Nancy!' but Alfie said, _no. Not yet_.

The 'bus pulled out of the station. Right. The ship (which ship? My orders didn't say) sailed in two hours. That was how long I had to find her, get on board and join my friends. Once I was safely on the way to Frankland I could get back in touch with Mabel and Nancy. They wouldn't throw me overboard, would they? _Would_ they?

I should have known it was absolutely hopeless. There were too many people and it was too far to the docks and there were too many ships when I got there. The kitbag grew heavier and heavier as I trudged up and down the quayside, looking at every vessel for a sign that the Advance Brigade was on board. But there were only twenty or so of us girls, and every ship had hundreds or thousands of men on board. This was the Big Push all right.

Too late I realised that I couldn't be the only one who'd lost their directions. I went up to a military policeman and told him I'd missed my muster point. I showed him my fake documents and held my breath. Would he believe them? Yes he would. He said he couldn't help me himself, but if I went to the Information Desk in the old Customs Building, someone there probably would. It was only a couple of hundred yards down the dockside.

Of course there was a long queue outside the Customs Building by the time I got there, red-faced and streaming with perspiration. It was five past six before I reached the front of the queue. Another policemen examined my papers. I held my breath all over again, but that artist of mine had known what he was doing.

'Dock twenty-six,' he said after referring to his clipboard. 'HMS _Littlehampton_. You'd better hurry.'

'Where's Dock twenty-six?'

'Out of the door, turn right. Right again at the pier, and two hundred yards down. You can't miss it.'

I couldn't. I ran like I've never run before. I fell twice when my kitbag caught on the kerb and banged my knees and my shins. If only... If only Alfie had been able to Change and help me carry it. But that was completely out of the question.

I reached the dock, dazed and panting for breath. There was my ship, a trim little corvette with smoke drifting from her funnel. But it was too late. The crew had pulled the boarding-ramps on deck and cast off the mooring lines. The Blue Peter was flying next to the White Ensign on her mast and, as I watched helplessly, she slipped away from the pier and pointed her bows towards the inner harbour entrance. There was a band no more than a few yards from me, playing _The Banks of Green Willow_ to wish her _bon voyage_ and see her safely on her way.

They weren't playing it for me. I sat on my useless kitbag and cried my eyes out.


	12. The Convoy

_The Convoy_

_Well the sun it shines down on these green fields of France,  
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance._

Eric Bogle

You can't sit and cry for ever. Tears can only take you so far. Sooner or later you have to stop and think about what you're going to do next. You can do that for quite a long time. You look at the water in the harbour and you look at the wall behind you, with its lifebelts and notices. There's a little lighthouse at the end of the pier. As it's still daylight and the weather is fine you probably notice that its light isn't flashing. Nor is its foghorn sounding.

After a while you realise that all this is getting you absolutely nowhere. So you stand up and grab hold of your kitbag and turn away from the sea and walk slowly down the pier to the dockside, while the salt air blows and the gulls cry and the platoons of marching men press you to the harbour wall. _Beggar it. Oh, beggar it all to hell._

'Let's go to the station,' Alfie said when we reached the dockside. 'We can catch a train back to London.'

'We'll catch it all right. We'll catch it from Captain Lowther, that's for sure.'

'Oh, I'm sure that with your intelligence and my charm we'll muddle through somehow.'

'Don't be silly, daemon.' A thought struck me. 'The trains go straight from here to Aldbrickham, don't they?'

'Yes, that's how we used to get here in the old days.'

'So we could... we could go home.'

'What?' Alfie stared into my eyes and I stopped dead on the pavement. 'Home? To Aunt Sybil?'

I stared back at him. 'It wouldn't be so bad.'

Alfie shook his head. '"Wouldn't be so bad!" I thought _I_ was the coward around here.'

'You're not a coward.'

'_You_ will be if you give up now and go home. What would you do there?'

'I don't know. Help with the farm, teach in the village school. I'd find something to do.'

'Hah. Hah! You, a teacher? Hold me while I split my sides!'

I very nearly dropped him on the pavement. 'So what are we going to do?'

'We are going to go back to London. We are going to tell Captain Lowther what we have done. All of it.'

'She'll be furious.'

'Yes, she will.'

'She'll put us on a charge. We'll be scrubbing floors for a month.'

'Yes, we will.'

All this time soldiers, sailors, longshoremen and pilots, customs officers and policemen flowed around us, respecting our right to disagree in public and argue out aloud.

'I can't face her. I thought I'd never have to see her again. I was going to write to her once we got to Frankland. I was going to explain.'

'Once we were safely out of the country. Cowardy-cowardy-custard.'

'Oh shut up! Bloody sarcastic, know-it-all daemon! I hate you!' I pulled back my arm to, I don't know, throw him in the water or something like that. Something incredibly stupid, anyway. But a hand caught my elbow.

'Don't, miss.'

I looked down. It was a boy, maybe ten or eleven years old, but looking both younger and older than that. He was short and scrawny and his face was pinched and grey. The scrappy tatters of a grey uniform flapped around his shoulders. I could smell his poverty, sour and desperate.

'What do you want, boy?' Oh no, that came out all wrong. I didn't mean to sound so haughty.

'Don't hurt him, miss.' The boy's own daemon was shrew-formed, clinging to his arm with her whiskers twitching nervously.

'Mind your own business.' How dare this urchin interfere with Alfie and me! I turned away. 'Unless,' I said over my shoulder, 'You want to carry my luggage back to the station for me. There's sixpence in it for you.'

'It's too heavy for us, miss. But miss...'

I turned back to face him and caught sight of his eyes for the first time. They were a startling, hypnotic azure blue, like the colour you see in pictures of the Peaceable Ocean.

'Yes?'

'You could take another ship. Find Mabel and Nancy on the other side.'

I was dumbstruck. How could he possibly know what I was doing, who I was trying to catch up with?

'There, miss. Do you see?' He pointed to a group of men and my eyes were compelled to follow his finger. 'They'll help you.'

I suddenly realised that the boy was indicating the men I had shared a railway compartment with that morning. The were formed up with their platoon next to a loading crane. 'Their ship sails in an hour. Go on, now.' He gave me a gentle shove.

And the boy disappeared, just like that. I looked around wildly. Where was he? Was that him, in a sad cohort of workhouse kids, clustered around a well-fed and brutal-looking overseer? Or over there, sitting on a barrel of fuel oil? Where on earth had he gone?

I must have looked ridiculous, standing with my kitbag and daemon in the middle of the dockyard, with my eyes swivelling around like a loose turret. No wonder my friend the lance-corporal detached himself from his men and walked over to me. 'Hello! Are you all right there, miss?' he said, giving me a friendly smile.

I smiled back at him, my worries and fears dissolving away. 'I am now,' I said.

That night I dreamed I slept with the blue-eyed boy and we made love together. I can't explain it. I'd never made love with another person and he was only a little boy, and an unattractive one at that. But there was something about his eyes that made me want to take him in my arms and wrap myself about him and press our bodies together until we both howled with the shared delirium of it. I woke in a terrific sweat with Alfie on the verge of a Change.

I'm getting ahead of myself. What happened before that was I told Lance-Corporal Bosham I'd missed my ship, but that I was sure that if I could only get to wherever it was that he was going I'd be able to link up with my unit and that everything would work out. He took me to see his platoon commander, who was a very young-looking subaltern with a permanently pink face and nicely tousled, light-brown hair. Second Lieutenant Hindhead blinked at the sight of my bristly head (my uniform cap hid the worst of it), shook his head, said it was all most irregular and that he'd have to talk to his CO, but yielded when I told him how terribly grateful I'd be if he'd protect me. Poor chap! He was hardly any older than me, fresh out of school and terrified of putting a foot wrong.

I was to learn that there were a lot of inexperienced young officers like him in our forces. Brytain had been an Imperial power too long and our soldiers were trained to administer colonies, not wage war against a well-organised foe.

I hid myself in the middle of the second rank of Lieutenant Hindhead's platoon. I got around any problems that might have arisen with the military police by borrowing a beret and regimental cap badge. Apart from my grey uniform and the fact that I was carrying a kitbag instead of a pack I looked not completely unlike a skinny soldier with a very short haircut. 'What's KSLI stand for?' I asked, returning the beret and its inscribed badge to its owner once we were safely embarked and camped on the foredeck of HMS _Aardvark_.

'That's King's Salopshire Light Infantry, miss,' the quiet private I'd spoken to on the train replied.

'Are you all from around there? Salop and Clee Hill and the Ercall?'

'Yes, miss.'

'Oh, please stop calling me that! My friends call me Sunny.'

'Sonny? Like Sonny Boy?'

'No - Sunny as in Sunny Jim. You know:

_"Over the fence flies Sunny Jim,  
It was Force Flakes that made him."_

'I'm Sonya really, but I hate it. It's a silly name. Sonya Clarice Moon. Ugh!'

'I'm John. John Fraser. Pleased to meet you.' We shook hands and our daemons silently exchanged greetings.

The good ship _Aardvark_ cast off and, rocking slightly, joined the rest of the fleet that was sailing over the Manche to Frankland. We lay on the deck with our packs or kitbags for pillows and watched the sky grow slowly dark and the stars come out. Smoke poured from the funnels behind us. The running lights - red, white and green - were lit and I remembered an old saying of Daddy's:

_Green to Green, Red to Red,  
Perfect safety, go ahead._

It was a Rule For The Avoidance Of Collisions At Sea, or so he had told me. That sounded terribly important, so I'd memorised it.

We chatted, and at eight o'clock we were detailed off in threes to take our mess-tins to the galley to get our rations, which were bread and stew and chai. 'We'll get rum later,' said John Fraser, and we did. It had been a long day, and the rum went straight to my head, even though it had been diluted with hot water to make grog. I'd been looking forward to trying some grog. The Comrades Three of my childhood reading were always throwing back tumblers of the stuff, so I supposed that you couldn't really go adventuring unless you had some with you. It was pretty foul, actually, and I didn't light up a cigarette until I was sure the fumes weren't going to set my throat on fire. I handed the rest of my earlier poker winnings around the platoon.

If Aunt Sybil had known I had taken up smoking! And Woodbines, too! Alfie was turning into a bit of an Aunt Sybil himself. He moaned about the smell, mostly. _Keep that stuff away from my fur_, he complained. Thinking of Aunt Sybil reminded me of home, and Daddy. I had some new unopened letters from him in my tunic pocket so now, as the evening turned into night and we snuggled together on the deck, trying not to poke each other in the face, I opened the one with the latest postmark (three weeks ago) and read it:

_Dearest Sunshine,_

_I can't tell you where I am at present, but do be sure that I am safe and well and missing my darling daughter very much._

'I miss you too, Daddy.'

_I am sorry to tell you that I have received some very disturbing letters from your Aunt Sybil in which she tells me that you have abandoned your schooling and run away to join the Ambulance Brigade._

_In response, I have written both to her and to the commander of your depot, Captain Joy Lowther._

"Joy"? That was her name? I giggled.

_Sonya, it was most irresponsible of you to take off by yourself without telling anyone. In fact, Sybil informs me that you told deliberate lies and performed an elaborate subterfuge to make your getaway. I cannot say that I was at all pleased to discover that my daughter had become such an accomplished liar._

My heart sank. I'd not thought of it like that.

_You and I will have to have a very serious talk when next I return home on leave. You are a Moon, and a Gresham. Such behaviour not only demeans your own good character, it is also a betrayal of two honest and honourable family names. I am very disappointed in you for behaving in this way._

Oh. My heart sank further. I had thought I was doing the right thing. I had thought I was so jolly clever, and now it looked as if I had been nothing more than a nasty, lying little cow.

_However. I know why you did it, Sunny, because I have done the same thing myself (without the deceitfulness.) I cannot bring myself to condemn you for doing what I have done and, especially, what Gerry did. You are a Moon; and Moons don't sit still when there are work and duty to be done._

_In this respect I am very proud of you, my darling. Some day soon we will meet again, and you and I will be able to shake hands over your past mistakes and stand side by side, wearing the King's uniform. I shall be very honoured to do that._

_Your loving,_

_Daddy_

'Are you all right, miss... er, Sunny?' said Private John Fraser.

'Yes,' I sniffled, 'Perfectly all right.' And I put an arm over his chest and buried my face in his shoulder.

And that night I had that strange dream I told you about and woke disturbed, frustrated and aroused with nothing to be done about it. I sat up, feeling the hot blood blushing my cheeks. The ship was steaming at a steady pace through the water and the first brightening of the dawn was showing on the port side. Ahead, in the ever-increasing light, I could see the coastline and ranks of ships standing outside the entrance to the port of Le Havre, where we were due to land. I guessed that we would have to wait some time before disembarking, so I stepped carefully over the ranks of sleeping men and found the heads, where I found a cubicle and relieved myself. When I returned to my place, it was to find that John had put his hand on my kitbag-pillow. I lifted it gently aside, stretched myself out on the hard wooden decking, and let his arm nestle next to mine, warm and comforting. It was the coldest part of the night, and I needed that.

The ship's engines throbbed and the wind of our passage swept over us. The men of the KSLI had arranged things so that I was sheltered by the nearby forward gun-turret and their own bodies. Above me, and towards the stern of the ship was the bridge. I could see the helmsman and the captain at their stations, their faces lit by the the anbaric glow of the running-lights. I thought about Daddy. Was he standing on the bridge of his own ship, looking towards some foreign shore? Perhaps he was part of this very convoy. My heart ached when I thought of him. Maybe I could have found HMS _Undaunted_ in the Pompey docks and be standing next to him now. We would talk through the long night-watch; about home, and London, and the Ambulance Brigade. And about Gerry, of course, buried somewhere under the waves off the coast of Heligoland, sunk by a treacherous mine.

Oh Gerry, if only you could be here now. We'd talk and talk and talk... Alfie was silent. He had his own memories.

We finally docked at midday. I had been growing increasingly anxious as the morning wore on and we tossed in the bay outside the harbour, waiting our turn to dock. The wind blew first onshore and then offshore. It rained for a while and we took shelter under our capes. The tension and worry built up in me as the long hours dragged by. How far in front of us was HMS _Littlehampton_? Would the Advance Brigade form up and drive off before Alfie and I could intercept it? What would we do then?

_Don't fret_, said Alfie. _There's nothing we can do about it. We just have to wait._ Some of his _sang-froid_ transferred to me, of course, and I felt a little calmer, although still worried.

As soon as the gangway was in place, I broke ranks (we had been standing in our platoons and companies for _hours_) and ran down it to dry land. 'Hoi! You! Sonny! Come back 'ere!' came the voice of an irate sergeant-major behind me but I ignored him and, ducking between the outstretched arms of two MPs, ran through the lines of men who had already disembarked. Great! I couldn't keep up that pace for long with the weight of my kitbag pressing down on my shoulder, so I stopped as soon as I had reached the dock gates and set it down by my feet.

Now then. Next move - find my comrades. I dredged my memory for the Frankish I had learned at Highdean. 'Monsieur?' I called to a passer-by, 'Ou se trouve le gare?'

The man shrugged his shoulders and I braced myself for a stream of incomprehensible Frankish. 'Il te faut suivre les soldats,' he said, and turned away with a disdainful look. Right. That was pretty obvious. If I wanted to find the railway station, all I had to do was to follow the lines of men marching into town. No doubt they would parade in the square before joining the trains that would take them to the Front. I hoisted up my kitbag again and set off after them.

If I hadn't stopped on the way to the _centre-ville_ to rest my aching arms I'd have missed them. The ambulances, I mean. As soon as I saw them, it clicked in my mind. Of course! We were ambulance drivers, weren't we? What could be simpler than that we should drive the ambulances from the port to the Advance Brigade's base? They couldn't go by train - the trains would be full of men and materiel. Why waste space that could otherwise be used by our fighting forces?

_To save benzenol?_ said Alfie.

_Yes, clever daemon. To save gaz. Now come on!_

The ambulances were parked in a row along a side street, pointing out at an angle into the roadway. I remembered that people drive on the right hand side of the road in Frankland. That might take some getting used to. I could just about manage driving on the left... So, what to do now?

_Hide in the back,_ said Alfie. _We can't let them know we're here yet. They could still send us back to England. They won't be able to do that once we're up at the Front._

_Sensible Alfie!_ I kissed his nose. _Come on, then._ And I leaned forward and let my kitbag roll off my shoulder and into the back of the first ambulance in the row. I was learning a few tricks of the soldiering trade, you see. I jumped in after it, pulled out a stretcher, and laid down on it.

Then Alfie and I fell fast asleep. It had been a long day, and it wasn't over yet. That's another thing soldiers do; to get some sleep whenever there's an opportunity, because you never know when your next chance will come.

When we awoke, we were were rolling down the straight roads of northern Frankland at a steady thirty miles per hour. I sat up carefully and peeked out of the right-hand window. The afternoon sun was blinking and flashing as its rays were interrupted by the trees which were planted at twenty-foot intervals along both sides of the road.

_For shade in summer_, said Alfie.

_Let's hope we don't drive into them!_ I replied.

There were two people in the front of the ambulance. I lay down again quickly, but not quickly enough to escape the notice of the passenger. She turned around and smiled at me. 'Hello, Sleeping Beauty,' she said.

There was no point in our hiding any more so I got to my feet and made my way to the front of the vehicle, holding on to the grab-rail as I went.

'Hello,' I said, 'I'm Driver Moon. Sunny.' I held out my hand and the passenger took it with a grin.

'Nice to meet you, Sunny. I'm Driver Georgina Harris, but you can call me Georgie. Oh, and here's Mungo.' Georgie's daemon was a beautiful, sleek-furred otter. This,' nodding towards the driver, a tall, dark-haired girl whose head kept bumping against the cab roof, 'is Catherine, or Kathryn, or Ekaterina or whatever she's calling herself today.'

The driver turned and looked at me over the top of her opticals. 'Hello, Ekaterina,' I said. 'I won't shake your hand just now.' I had much rather she kept it on the steering tiller.

'Oh, I don't mind,' she said and, letting go of the controls, pumped my arm vigorously. The vehicle continued on its way regardless.

'Pleased to meet you, Kathryn,' I said. 'This is Alpharintus.' Alfie bowed to her fox-daemon Kyrillion. 'What would you actually prefer to be called?'

'Kathryn, Caitlyne, Kathleen, Ekaterina, Kathy, Catherine, Rene, Katie, I don't mind.'

'But there must be one name you like more than any of the others.'

The girl thought for a minute. 'Oh sod it,' she said. 'Just call me Kate.'

We took it in turns to drive in shifts of two hours each. No wonder Georgie and Sod-It (as Alfie and I were calling Kate to ourselves) hadn't thrown me out of the ambulance when they set off. (Of course they had checked in the back before they set off). Not when I could give them valuable extra hours of sleeping time by sharing the driving job. I was horrified to learn that we were expected to drive all day and all night. We would only be allowed to stop to refuel. I stayed in the ambulance while we were stationary because I wanted to surprise Nancy and Mabel when we arrived at our destination.

When I wasn't driving, keeping a careful eye on the red lights of the vehicle in front, I sat and smoked in the passenger seat or lay on the stretcher in the back. I wasn't feeling so tired now, and as we bounced and bumped down the Frankish roads, a little jingle started to form itself in my head. I couldn't write it down then, but later I found I still remembered it so I put it in my driver's logbook, at the back. I called it _The Convoy_ and this is how it went:

_Wheels have spokes,  
And spokes tell jokes,  
To tyres behind your back._

_Clerks from banks,  
And ranks of tanks,  
Are stumbling in their track._

_You and I,  
May sigh and try,  
For all the things we lack._

_It's good to see,  
That you and me,  
Have rations in our pack._

_And that we'll never turn our back,  
not even tho' our courage crack,  
and fail before the first attack._

Silly stuff, I know, but it helped to pass the time.

It seemed to go on for ever, that journey, though it was really no more than a day and a half until we pulled up in the square of the town of St-Claude, a few miles to the north of Geneva on our side of the river Rhone. I was asleep when we stopped moving, so the first Alfie and I knew of our arrival was when a hand shook my shoulder and a voice I didn't know said, 'Shake a leg, there. Billeting parade!'

I staggered to my feet and climbed out of the back, pulling my kitbag after me. The other women and girls were lining up in ranks, so I joined the end of one of them, next to Sod-It. I could see no sign of Mabel or Nancy but I wasn't surprised as it was about three o'clock in the morning and dark. A tough-looking woman stood in front of us with a row of what appeared to be townsfolk behind her. 'Right, you lot,' she said. 'I've got your billeting details here. Fall out in threes from the front and collect your sheets. These good people here will show you your billets for tonight. First parade is at eight ack-emma tomorrow. Enjoy your lie-in, ladies. Dismissed!

Kate, another girl I hadn't met before and I were assigned to a Madame Fluegel. She owned a house set back a little from the centre of the town and we were given truckle beds in the attic. _Five hour's sleep!_ said Alfie as we settled down.

_Less than that. We've got to get up, get dressed and eat breakfast before eight._

You _have. I'm a daemon, remember? Just let me know when you've seen to your physical needs and I'll look after our metaphysical ones._

_By sleeping?_

_Yes._

_There's no need to look so smug about it._

_No?_

_No. Anyway, we'll meet up with the Comrades Three in the morning._

_And then?_

_And then - we'll find out why we're here. What drove us to come here. Because, Alfie..._

_Yes?_ came my daemon's sleepy voice in my inner ear.

_I'm double-damned if I know!_

* * *

_Author's note_

You may be wondering why Sunny and Alfie sometimes talk to each other in italics and at other times using normal quoted speech. The answer is that I believe that humans and their daemons can converse in two modes. They can either speak as you and I might speak - out aloud - or in a more intimate, telepathic manner. In this story I have used quotes to denote vocal speech and italics to signify metaphysical communication.


	13. The Comrades Three

_The Comrades Three_

_O, don't deceive me,  
O, never leave me,  
How could you use  
A poor maiden so?  
_

Traditional

Alfie and I were woken by the sound of gunfire, booming like distant thunder and echoing from the mountains to the east. I got up and went to the attic window to look, but it was facing the wrong way and we could see nothing. The other girls stirred and muttered in their beds. It was still early; how early I couldn't tell without digging into my kitbag and finding my watch.

The sky was lightening slowly, but the darkness still persisted. It was going to be a long day, I guessed, and so I took Alfie back to bed and lay down. No doubt we would become tired of guns soon enough. I closed my eyes and let the dawn grow and flower in the streets and fields outside.

Madame Fluegel banged on the door, interrupting a strange dream in which I was dancing a vigorous _pasadoble_ with Private John Fraser. He was looking very handsome in faultless evening dress and I was feeling awkward and frumpy in my maintenance overalls. We were just being cut in on by Captain Lowther - it was a ladies' excuse-me - when Sod-It shook my shoulder. 'Come on Sunny. Breakfast!'

I wondered if Kate had been to Frankland before. If she was expecting breakfast to consist of kaffee and cream, bacon, eggs, black pudding, fried bread and tomatoes she was in for quite a surprise.

I wasn't at all surprised when, on staggering downstairs to the kitchen, we found nothing more than a pot of acorn kaffee, a jug of milk and a round loaf of black bread standing on the table. 'Tuck in,' I said before the others could say anything and, 'Merci beaucoup,' to our hostess.

'Je vous en prie.' She smiled briefly and left us alone in the kitchen.

'I say. . .' said Kate.

'I mean. . .' said the other girl.

'Shut up,' I hissed.

'What?'

'Pardon?'

'Stop. Just think for a minute. How much food do you think she's got in her larder? Do you think she wanted us dumped on her? We're probably eating her rations for the whole day. Now smile, and thank her when you see her next.' Sod-It and the other girl looked down at the table.

_Gosh, Sunny._

_Yes, Alfie?_

_You surprise me sometimes. That's not like you at all, to consider the feelings of other people._

_They don't call me the elusive Miss Moon for nothing. Now let me look after our physical needs, eh?_ I broke off a piece of bread and dunked it in my kaffee.

We paraded in the town square where we'd drawn up the ambulances the night before. I saw Nancy and Mabel, but they didn't see me; I made sure of that. I was so looking forward to surprising them. The tough woman NCO who'd sent us to our billets the previous night got us formed up into three ranks and standing at attention. Then she handed us over to a tall army lieutenant with a fine cougar-daemon by his side.

'At ease,' he said. We relaxed a little and linked our hands behind our backs.

'Welcome to the Front, ladies.' He gave us a sardonic smile. 'I'm Lieutenant Deveney and I'm the CO of this unit. It's my job to keep you hard at work and out of trouble. This,' he indicated the woman, 'is Sergeant Pearce. If you have any questions regarding our day-to-day operations you should, in the first instance, address them to her.

'Now then. All of you are in the Advance Brigade because you were put forward by the COs of your own units back in England. I'm going to suppose that this was because you are good drivers and mechanics, and not because they couldn't wait to get rid of you.' There was a nervous titter.

'You are all volunteers. This is important, because the work you are going to do will be dangerous. Very dangerous. You are aware that your vehicles are painted white with red crosses. This identifies you as mercy workers and, by the rules of war, immune from attack. This does not mean that you are safe. Far from it. The rules of war are only aspirational, ladies, and liable to be broken in the heat of battle. If you work on or near a battlefield you are quite likely to find yourselves under fire. Shells do not recognise the insignia of the Red Cross and they burst where they will.

'You have just spent your last night under a tiled roof. From now on you will be sleeping in your cabs or, if you are lucky, under canvas. We will move up nearer to the front line starting at oh-eleven hundred hours today. We will be based at a field hospital - there is no need to tell you where it is located. You will find out soon enough. From there you will run an ambulance service to and from the various Casualty Clearing Stations which are situated just behind the lines.

'You are here because you are the best. I know that and I hope you know it too. I am sure that you will acquit yourselves with honour, professionalism and pride. I am privileged to be your commanding officer. Thank you.'

Sergeant Pearce stepped forward. 'Brigade!' We snapped to attention. 'When I say "fall out" you will fall out and go directly to your assigned vehicles. I will call out your assignments now. You will not necessarily find yourself in the same vehicle or working with the same crew that you travelled in when you came here, so pay attention.' She began calling out names and vehicle registration numbers from her clipboard.

'Brigade! Brigade, fall out!'

The brigade fell out as it had been ordered, except for Alfie and me. The sergeant glared at us. 'Hey! You! Go to your vehicle! Move!'

I couldn't. I didn't know where to go. She strode up to me. 'What's the matter with you?'

'Please, Sergeant, I haven't been assigned to a vehicle.'

'What do you mean, you idiot girl, not assigned? What's your name?'

'Moon, Sergeant. Driver First Class.'

Sergeant Pearce checked her clipboard. 'There's no Driver Moon on my list. You've come to the wrong place.'

'Please, Sergeant. I've got my orders.' I held out my forged papers. 'I've come from number twelve depot, with Driver Patterson and Driver Vale.'

She looked closer at me. 'God help us! What've you done to your hair?'

'I cut it, Sergeant.'

'"I cut it, Sergeant!" Pah!' She looked away and her daemon followed her. 'Patterson!'

I could have sworn they heard her in Moskva. Mabel looked up from the opened bonnet of her vehicle. She started with surprise as she saw me for the first time since our goodbye at Agincourt Station.

'Yes, Sarge?'

'Do you know this individual?'

'That's. . . that's Driver Moon, Sarge.'

'Right. She's with you, then. Look after her. She's a bit touched, if you ask me.' Sergeant Pearce tapped her forehead with her index finger. 'Go on, Fuzzy.' She pushed me in Mabel's direction.

'Hi, gang,' I said as I reached Mabel's and Nancy's ambulance. 'Glad to see me?'

'Oh, good grief,' said Mabel, throwing down a spanner with a clang.

'What the hell are you doing here?' said Nancy.

'And I love you too,' I replied, somewhat nonplussed.

They made me sit in the back. Actually, first they made me load up the ambulance with fuel cans and dressings and tincture of iodine and poppy tablets and daemon-poultices and plaster-of-Paris and brandy. Then they made me get their kitbags. Then they let me get mine. Then they told me to sit in the back and keep my mouth shut. They hardly spoke to me otherwise.

_What's going on?_ I asked Alfie as we pulled out of the town square. _Why aren't Mabel and Nancy pleased to see me? We're the Three, aren't we? We stick together, don't we?_

Alfie sounded genuinely puzzled. _I don't know. I really, truly don't know._

We set out in convoy with a number of troop-carriers and crossed the river by means of a temporary pontoon bridge, lurching and swaying as we went. The road on the Swiss side had once been fine, level and smooth, but now it was pockmarked with shell-holes and craters. We had to leave the carriageway and drive on the pavement and verges to the side.

Not that that was necessarily an improvement. The towns we passed through had suffered badly from shot and shell and rubble lay everywhere. I climbed to the front of ambulance and sat next to Nancy so I could see out better. She moved aside with some reluctance.

I was staggered by what I saw. Yes, I'd seen bombing in London and I hadn't forgotten the horrible death of Jack and Minta, but this was different. . . It was as if a giant had trampled over the countryside and towns, crushing fields and forests under his iron-shod heels and swinging his bludgeon at houses, shops and factories. I used to do that with Gerry's bricks toy bricks when I was a baby. I loved stomping the buildings he made into wood and clay rubble. He'd pretended he didn't mind - at least, that's how I remember it. I wondered where the people whose homes and workplaces these ruins had once been were living now. Or were they still living? Could anybody have survived the kind of onslaught that had done such awful damage?

'They say these places have been lost to the Enemy and taken back again many times over,' Mabel said to Nancy.

'It wouldn't surprise me,' she replied.

'But we're winning, aren't we?' I asked. 'Aren't we?'

They fell silent, ignoring me. The road passed slowly under our wheels, crunching and rattling as we crawled along.

After three hours on the road and no more than four or five miles' progress we stopped by the side of a church. Its tower and spire were gone and the roof of the nave lay open to the sky, but it gave us a little shelter and cover. We had been issued with rations when we left Saint Claude but I'd had the impression that the amounts had been closely calculated and that my supplies had been taken from stocks that had been meant for others. I felt embarrassed by this - especially after what I'd said to Sod-It that morning - and so I sat a little apart from the others and munched my rye bread sandwiches in silence. Alfie was quiet too.

I got up and walked around to the other side of the church to relieve myself. It did seem wrong somehow, doing it by the side of a holy building, but it had been quite a long time since we had set out that morning and I didn't want to be caught short later. I made sure I couldn't be seen and Alfie kept a look out for me.

_Physical needs! Ha! said Alfie_

_You are my steadfastest friend. Now keep your eyes peeled._

_Sarcasm doesn't suit you, my sweet._ He was in a funny mood, I could tell.

When I returned everyone was gathered together and facing away from me. I wondered if I had missed a further briefing from the lieutenant or Sergeant Pearce so I pushed my way to the front of the group. But no, Lieutenant Deveney and his sergeant were standing by a gravestone on the far side of the burial ground talking quietly to each other. I say I pushed my way though the girls, but it would be more true to say they made way for me. Mabel was standing at the far side, next to Nancy. It looked as if I had interrupted something, because she gave me a quick glance as I approached and then turned away.

I felt terribly uncomfortable, as if I'd done something awful, like a _faux pas_, but without knowing what it was. You know, mentioning the name of a black-sheep uncle or somebody's ex-wife in the wrong company. Or belching in the Oratory. Of course you know when you've done that, don't you?

Nobody said a word. We stood awkwardly for a minute or two before Sergeant Pearce marched over and got us to tidy up our things and go back to the convoy.

We reached the field hospital at six o'clock. It was a collection of tents and wooden huts, linked by pathways made of wooden duck-boards. The place looked haphazard at first sight, but over the next day or two as I got to know the layout I realised that it was actually laid out in the most logical way possible, with separate areas for receiving wounded men and processing them through the operating theatre. That was the grand term for the biggest of the huts. Fixed to the roofs of the huts were white canvas sheets, painted with red crosses. Enemy gyropters sometimes flew low overhead, ignoring our ack-ack fire, but they didn't fire on us or drop bombs close to us.

The sound of artillery was much louder now and almost continuous. There were two batteries only a mile away from us on each side. I wondered how we would be able to sleep with all that racket going on.

There was no sleeping place for me, of course. It seemed that I was surplus to requirements. I stood hopefully next to Nancy and Mabel when the places were assigned but they didn't seem to want to speak up for me, or offer me a place in their tent. So then I went and found Sod-It and Georgie who had been given bunks to share with the nurses. But there was no room for me there either.

'It's awful when these cock-ups happen,' said Kate. 'Why not go and see that nice lieutenant? He might help.'

'Or the Sarge,' added Georgie, unrolling her sleeping bag and avoiding looking at me.

'Yes, that's a good idea. I'll do that,' I said, and left them to it. Perhaps I would, later.

There was nowhere else to go, so after supper, which was a dismal meal of chewy, fatty meat and soggy vegetables, Alfie and I sat at one end of the table, ignoring everyone and being ignored by them, except for the occasions when I could have sworn they pointed at me and exchanged knowing looks. I felt desperately homesick; not for Pangborne, nor for Highdean, but for Mornington, where everything had been all right and nobody had hated me. Afterwards, a group of them ganged up together and went out to an _estaminet_, where they planned to get famously drunk. Naturally they didn't ask me. I sat in the corner and smoked one solitary Woodbine after another. Nobody came over to talk to me. Eventually I gave up on that and returned to Nancy and Mabel's ambulance. I rolled out the stretcher-carrier, laid down on it and cried myself to sleep, all alone except for the sword close by my side.

The next day was no better. Everybody had decided to stop ignoring me, but instead they settled for being very polite and correct. Some of them spoke to me in the third person. 'If Driver Moon would be so kind as to pass me that carboy.' That kind of thing. And just as there had been nowhere for me to sleep, neither was there anything for me to do. There were twelve ambulances and twenty-four crew in the Advance Brigade, plus me. Clearly, until somebody was taken ill or injured I was, yet again, a spare part.

The sergeant saw me standing by myself as the ambulances drove off after First Parade. She took pity on me, or perhaps she wanted to keep me out of trouble. 'Nothing to do, Moon?' she said in a gruff voice.

'I'll do anything, Ma'am,' I replied, still muzzy with sleep.

'Don't call me "Ma'am". I'm an NCO, not an officer.'

'Sorry, Sarge, I knew that. Silly mistake.'

'What are we to do with you, eh, Fuzzy?' The sergeant stood with both hands on her hips. 'Can you lift and carry?'

'Yes, Sarge.'

'The get yourself over there and report to the admissions ward sister. She'll find you something to do.' Sergeant Pearce pointed to one of the larger huts. I walked over there and found stout, capable Sister Moulson standing by a press and sorting linen. She was very happy to hand the job over to me.

I stayed with Sister Moulson for the rest of that day. It was a relief - such a relief - to escape from the hostile atmosphere of the Advance Brigade. I still had no idea why they had taken against me so. Nobody had ever done anything like that to me before, not even when I first went to Highdean and had to get on with lots of new girls in a strange new place. It'd been hard, and I'd shed a few tears those first few days, but it hadn't been _nasty_. This was.

I was carrying the sword with me once more.

That night I joined the Advance Brigade in its makeshift mess for dinner. I tried - oh, I tried - to make friends with them, but even the girls I thought I was all right with didn't seem to want to know me. Kate, Georgie, Nancy. None of them. Especially not Mabel. So afterwards I sat outside and smoked and thought. Alfie kept six feet away from me and complained about the smell.

I realise I've said nothing about that first day in the field hospital. I didn't fold sheets and dressings all day, that's for sure. About ten o'clock the first ambulances returned from the CCSs with their precious cargo of wounded men. From then on it was absolute hell.

I'd seen injured men before, of course, but that had been when I was in London. Those men had already been patched up by the doctors in Frankland and their wounds treated and cleaned. These men were different. Their wounds were fresh, the blood still red on their torn uniforms. There were only temporary field dressings covering the places where their limbs had been torn off, or their skulls shattered by flying shrapnel. They had not yet been given clean water to drink, or poppy to take away their pain and give their tormented throats a rest from screaming. They had not been taken away to die.

There were worse sights to be seen, I am sure, in trenches where mortar shells had fallen, or in land-mined dugouts, or at the crossroads they called Jekyll Park Corner. Worse too, at the Casualty Clearing Stations. But it was my first day, and... it was as if I had learned nothing from my experiences in Mornington and Camperdown. They counted for nothing, they were a walk in the woods compared with this.

I did my best. What more could I do? Sister Moulson growled and complained when I was clumsy, or didn't know where the stores were kept. She swore like an infantryman. But when the flood tide of maimed humanity receded a little she found the time to encourage me a little.

'It's tough, your first day.' She put her hands on my shoulders. 'Why did you cut your hair so short?'

Everybody asked me that. 'To keep it out of the way, Sister.'

'You didn't need to do that. How old are you, anyway?'

'Nineteen, Sister.'

She looked into my eyes. Her snipe-daemon stared at Alfie, who was tucked safely into the breast pocket of my tunic.

'Maybe you are.' Sister Moulson shook her head. 'Maybe you're not. What was his name?'

She had taken me by surprise. 'G-Gerry.'

'Gerry. I see.'

'No, Sister, you don't. He was my brother, not my sweetheart.'

She looked even closer at me. I felt all of ten years old. 'Just as you say, you poor, lovely little thing. Come on. Back to work. Fetch that skip over, would you?'

Later on, when I was on the Calais train and had some free time, I managed to write something about my time with Sister Moulson, short though it was. I'm jumping ahead a bit but I'll put it down here, because this is where I think it belongs. When I began it I thought I was going to write something very angry, something very vivid and harsh that would make anybody who read it feel sick with rage at the _waste_ of it all, but it didn't come out that way. I don't think that anybody who has actually been in a war writes that kind of stuff - all blood and fire and glory - only those armchair warriors who used to make Daddy so cross. I think I understand now why he never talked very much about the sea-battles he had been in. It went too deep for boasting about or turning into a great big adventure. You couldn't explain how it had been to someone who hadn't lived through it himself. Anyway, here it is. I wrote it while I was sitting by the side of one of the vehicles after supper. Its wheels were covered with sticky mud - mud that was tinged with a shade of red that I had come to know all too well:

In The Field Hospital

_Blood is our stock in trade,  
The matron says,  
And broken limbs,  
Our exchange currency._

_Pain is our meat and drink;  
And when we sleep,  
The light still falls,  
Behind our eyes._

_Death is our daily task;  
The living men,  
Are bathed in mud,  
The winding sheets betray._

I spent a total of three days in that field hospital, less than three miles from the western ramparts of Geneva. All that time the trains were bringing more and more men up to the Front for the major effort that was, we were assured, going to sweep the Foe away and make the Holy City safe for generations to come. If I hadn't been working in the hospital I don't know what I would have done. Perhaps I'd have joined one of the columns of marching men and looked for death and glory in the shadow of the Great Dome of Geneva, fighting the Pagan Horde, as we called them. Perhaps I'd have joined up with the KSLI and found that nice Private Fraser and given myself to him, so that neither of us would have died unfulfilled.

But I bumped into Mabel outside the latrines and she gave me such a look that I couldn't stand it any longer. I followed her back to her tent, raised the flap and sat myself down in the entrance. She was in there with Nancy, getting ready to go to sleep. 'Right,' I said. 'I'm not leaving until you tell me what the hell is going on.'

'Going on?'

'You know what I mean. Don't come over all innocent with me. Look; I thought we were a team. Us. The Comrades Three. "Three For One, Three For All". So why are you treating me like dirt? And what have you been telling the others? Why do they all hate me so?'

Nancy sat up. 'Go away, Sunny,' she said. 'Go away now. We don't want to hurt you.'

'You don't want to hurt me? What do you think you've been doing these past three days? Buttering me up?'

'Calm down,' said Mabel.

'Calm down! Why should I calm down? I thought you were my friends. Now you're being horrible to me and I don't know why!' I was nearly shouting in my frustration.

'You tell her,' said Nancy, lying down again. 'I'm whacked.'

'Well?'

'Sunny,' Mabel started hesitantly, 'You're not supposed to be here. You know that, don't you?'

'Yes. So what? I _am_ here.'

'How did you get here?'

'The same way you did. Train, ship, ambulance. I did my fair share of the driving. Don't you worry about that.'

'If you say so.' Mabel's face was drawn with fatigue.

'So what's the problem?'

'You lied, Sunny. You lied to get here, didn't you? Your papers are forged, aren't they?'

'What if they are?'

'You're alway lying, do you know that? You pretended to be Lady Gresham. You said you could drive but you couldn't. You send fake letters to people. You've been saying you're a Driver, First Class, when you're not. You get lying documentation made up so you can follow us here.'

'Y-yes, but... I do my bit. I-' I was interrupted by a series of loud thumps from the gun emplacement to the north.

Nancy spoke. 'We can't trust you. Don't you know there's a war on? How can you work next to someone you can't trust? It's life and death now.'

'Captain Lowther knew all this. That's why she wanted to keep you in Mornington,' Mabel added.

I was totally confused now. 'But why didn't you say anything before?'

'It didn't matter before,' said Nancy. 'Now it does.'

'And you can't trust me?'

'No.' I could feel the tears starting in the corners of my eyes.

'You told all the other girls that? Is that what you were telling them at the church?'

There was a deafening crash from nearby. The Enemy was responding to our artillery barrage.

'They asked us about you.' _They blabbed? They blabbed about me? How dare they!_

'Traitors! You bloody traitors!' I drew the sword from my belt. 'I ought to...'

_No!_ said Alfie.

_Alfie..._

'You! You!' I pointed the sword at Mabel. She flinched. 'You told them, didn't you? You told them about Alfie!'

'No!

'Yes you did! You told them what a freak I am. You wanted to make them hate me! You told them he was an-'

_Sunny! Shush! Shut up!_ Alfie's voice was low and urgent.

'What?' said Nancy.

'No. No,' said Mabel. 'I would never do anything like that.'

'I don't believe you.' I lifted the sword.

'No really. Ask her.' Mabel looked frightened, as well she might. Her daemon Hal covered his eyes with his wings.

'Why should I believe her? You're both in it together!'

Alfie: _She's telling the truth._

_Really?_

_Really._

I put the sword down. 'All right. So you've been telling everyone in the Advance Brigade that I'm a lying cow who can't be trusted. It doesn't mean I can't help, does it? Why do you think I came here? I could have stayed safe at home. I could have gone back to school. But I didn't. I followed you because... because I wanted to do something important. And because I wanted to be with you. And now it's all turned out wrong...' My tears were running down my cheeks. 'Won't you let me stay? Please?'

Nancy looked at Mabel. The flash of a prematurely exploding shell far overhead lit our faces in red and green flares and shadows.

'I'm sorry, Sunny. It's out of our hands now. Go back to the ambulance. We all need to sleep, somehow.'

I left, wondering what Nancy had meant by "out of our hands".

Sleep was slow to come that night. It wasn't just the incessant roar of the guns and rocket launchers. Nor was it the images that kept appearing in front of my tight-closed eyes; of surgeons shaking their heads over blood-drenched operating tables, of broken-eyed men lying on stretchers and litters outside the ward doors, of Sister Moulson's grief-shattered face. No, it was me - or rather my friends and me. How could I have been so stupid? I'd thought we were all on the same side. I'd thought that we were equals; Mabel, Nancy and me. I'd thought we were comrades. But we weren't. They were grown-up women and I was a silly little lying... whatever. I felt ashamed of myself, and them.

The following morning, as I was on the way to the latrines to wash, Sergeant Pearce stopped me. 'Moon. Defaulters. Lieutenant's office. Now.'

Lieutenant Deveney's "office" was a plank of wood standing on two ammunition boxes outside his tent. He looked up as I approached and saluted him. 'Right, Moon.' I stood at attention, Sergeant Pearce by my side. 'I have received a communication from Captain Lowther.' He held up a pink anbarogram form. 'She was your commanding officer, was she not? In London?'

'Yes, Sir.'

'May I see your papers?' I reached into my tunic and handed them over. I thought I knew what was coming.

Lieutenant Deveney flicked through them, holding them up to the morning light. 'I see. These are forged papers, are they not?' He regarded me with eyes that were steel-grey and very direct. His cougar-daemon stood completely still by his side.

'Yes, Sir.'

'To utter forged military documents is a court-martial offence, carrying a maximum penalty of death by firing-squad. You do know that you are under martial law, don't you?

'Yes, Sir.' I had signed the Articles Of War in Mornington.

'Cases of this kind usually involve deserters. They forge orders sending them back home. You are clearly not a deserter. Why did you have these papers made?'

'I wanted to stay with my comrades, Sir.'

'How old are you, Driver Moon?'

'Nine... Sixteen and three-quarters, Sir.'

'Too young to serve. As I thought.' The lieutenant put his hands on the table top. A horrible churning weight landed in my stomach. Everything had gone horribly, totally, disastrously wrong. What was going to happen now?

'Moon. The Forces of the Crown were not established for your personal gratification. Nor was the Ambulance Brigade. They have serious work to do. Your role is not here. You should be at home in England; at school, for God's sake. Or, if you must, helping on the Home Front. In her 'gram Captain Lowther tells me that you are a useful member of her team. She asks me to return you to her and she requests that I treat you leniently. In the light of your assertion that your motives in coming here were honourable, I am inclined to accede to her request.'

'Thank you, Sir.'

'Do not thank _me_. Sergeant Pearce?'

'Sir?'

'Take Driver Moon out to the marshalling yard and administer one hour of Field Punishment Number Three. Then put her on the next returning convoy. I do not wish to see her or hear of her again.'

'Yes, Sir.' She led me away.

I'm not going to say anything about my punishment. It was humiliating and uncomfortable, but it did me no lasting harm. That afternoon I was put on a returning supplies wagon heading west. I was equipped with my kitbag - with the sword stowed safely away inside it - a food parcel and a set of wholly legitimate travel warrants and orders authorising my return to London. I didn't see Mabel or Nancy again, and they had the decency to keep away from the yard during my ordeal.

_They told him, didn't they? Mabel and Nancy told Lieutenant Deveney about us._

_Or more likely they sent a 'gram to Mornington._

Sergeant Pearce helped me into the back of the wagon. 'Go on, Fuzzy,' she said. 'We can't spare anyone to keep an eye on you. We'll just have to trust you to follow your orders. Can you do that? Just this once?' She winked at me.

'Yes, Sarge. I'll go home now,' I said.

And I really, honestly, truly meant it.


	14. The Crossroads

_The Crossroads_

_I went down to the crossroads,   
Tried to flag a ride.   
Nobody seemed to know me,   
Everybody passed me by._

Robert Johnson

The railway carriages were almost empty and I was able to get a compartment to myself with no trouble. A porter opened the door for me, put my baggage in the overhead rack and smiled broadly as he slid the door to, wishing me an enjoyable journey. Alfie and I waved to him from our window seat.

The train pulled out from the platform in the opposite direction from the one we'd expected, so we got up and sat down on the facing seat. Alfie perched on the little table by the window and watched with me as first the station buildings and then the rows of wagons in the sidings slid backwards before our eyes. A puff of steam looped down from the sky and batted itself against the glass.

As we picked up speed the coal-reeking smoke from the engine's funnel was lifted up by the air and spirited away from us. We knew how it would look from outside - the train speeding through the countryside, its wheels flashing and the smoke billowing and trailing along the roofs of the carriages and becoming part of the landscape. We had seen it in a kino at school.

Alfie left his place by the window and sat in my lap. I ran my hand along his back and sighed with pleasure to feel his fur - his lovely fur - become smooth and soft under my touch. 'Oh Alfie,' I said. 'I'm so looking forward to this.'

'After all we've had to put up with. Oh yes.' And he snuggled down even further than before; even warmer and nicer.

Towns, villages, hamlets sped by - they were all the same to me. Merely waypoints on my journey. Places to make a note of and maybe return to one day. Memories in advance, so to speak, stored away for our future enjoyment. 'Do you think,' I said to Alfie, 'that we might come here again? Soon?'

'Of course. One day we'll be free to go wherever we like, without being told all the time where we can stop or what we must do.'

'Some day.'

After we had been travelling for a couple of hours a steward brought me some lunch on a tray. The food was a little unfamiliar, but I was hungry so I wolfed it down, trying not to get any of the sauce on my clothes or drop crumbs on the floor. When I finished I found that I was feeling quite dozy - I hadn't had very much sleep the night before - so I pulled the blind down, closed my eyes, and drifted off into a shallow sleep that was full of the lights and sounds of the world outside, becoming part of my dreams.

When I awoke and let the blind back up with a reckless flapping of its cord it was to find that the character of the country outside my compartment had changed. Fields and woods and towns had given way to sand-dunes tufted with grass and occasional glimpses of a sea that was alternately green and blue. I looked at my watch. It was late in the afternoon - I had been asleep for over three hours. Even as I realised this the pace of the train slowed. We were coming to a halt.

I recognised the name of the station at once. We were there! We'd arrived! Alfie leapt in my hands in his excitement. 'Careful!' I said. 'We don't want any nasty accidents. Not now.'

With a squawk from its brakes and a banging of its couplings the train stopped. I lost my footing and crashed into the opposite seat.

'No accidents, eh?' said Alfie. 'Next time wait until the train stops before you stand up.'

I struggled to my feet. 'Yes, Aunt Sybil,' I replied, and tweaked his ear.

I started to pull my things down from the rack, but somebody stopped me. 'Hang on,' he said. 'Don't go doing yourself a mischief.' He shouldered my bags with ease and led me down the corridor and out of the train, stacking them up on the platform. 'There you are,' he said with a smile.

I flung myself at him and buried my face in his chest. 'Oh Gerry! Gerry! Gerry! You came! I was so hoping you would.' My brother put his arms around me and hugged me. I breathed in the smell of him and shivered, although the air was warm and the sun still high in the sky.

'It's wonderful to see you, Sunny.' I stood back and looked at him, tall and handsome and browned by sunlight and seaspray. My brother, on leave from the Royal Naval College and come to collect me from the train on the first day of the summer holidays. 'Come on. Everyone's down at the cottage waiting for you.'

'Everyone? Even the Syb-Thing?'

Gerry frowned. 'You can't have everything, you know. Mummy'll keep an eye on her.'

'We'll go places she can't get to, the fat old Thing! Won't we?'

'Of course we will.' Gerry linked his arm in mine and we passed through the ticket barrier to the station yard where a horse and cart were waiting to take us to our holiday cottage. The gilded light flickered between us in a sparkle of airborne dust-motes and we passed out of view and faded into memory.

The supplies wagon dropped me off at the nearest railway station. It was packed with soldiers and civilians - Brytish, Frankish and Doytch - but I was able to find a place on a westbound train with only a little inconvenience, not to mention some eyelash-batting and pushing and shoving. I even managed to get myself a window seat. Alfie and I sat down and waited for the off.

Once we got going - only a little late - the trip soon became smooth and enjoyable, although very slow. Things improved after the first ten miles or so. Clearly the Enemy hadn't wanted to spoil the railways and roads of the country that they thought they would soon be occupying so they hadn't bombarded it to anything like the same extent they had the towns and villages around Geneva. The further we went from the Holy City, the better it got.

The train stopped at every station along the route, whether in a town or the least significant wayside halt. People got on and people got off - civilians, mostly. From time to time the train stood for an hour or two in the middle of the open countryside. I never found out why - nobody told me or the other passengers and I didn't ask. Alfie and I kept ourselves to ourselves. I was tired and still a little sore and my mind wouldn't rest. Smoking did nothing for me. Alfie was no help either:

_It's so unfair._

_Not really._

_Yes it is. We were doing our best to help._

_No, we weren't. We were showing off again._

_Alfie!_

_And we were telling lies. That's what it was really. We deserved everything we got._

_Everything? Being treated like rubbish by everybody? Especially Nancy and Mabel. I hate them!_

_Hating them won't do any good. Not everybody let us down._

_Sister Moulson was good to us._

_Yes, she was. Can you guess why?_

_Why?_

_Because we were_ honest _with her._

_And we did our bit._

_We always do our bit._

It looked as if "doing our bit" meant letting ourselves be sent back to London in disgrace. Alfie and I continued to talk over what had happened to us. Over and over and over. I fell asleep some time around midnight, wedging myself against the side of the carriage. I trusted the other people in the carriage not to steal my things, not because they looked trustworthy but because I had very little choice in the matter.

The next morning I awoke to find the sun streaming through the carriage windows. We were standing in a little country station. To my surprise, the carriage was empty although when I looked out of the window there was nobody to be seen on the platform but a woman with a handcart, selling coffee. I panicked for a moment - what about my kitbag? Had it, after all, been stolen while I slept ? But no; there it was, safely stowed on the luggage rack.

There was no corridor on the train and I'd been asleep for hours. All right, let's not muck about - I was bursting. So I opened the door and jumped down onto the platform. Frankish stations have lower platforms than Brytish ones; did you know that? The _lavabos_ were foul, but I pinched my nose and did what I had to do as speedily as I could. Then I bought a cup of coffee and a nice crisp _croissant_ for my breakfast from the handcart woman.

When I climbed back into the carriage it was to find that the seat across from mine was occupied by a young workman in blue overalls. I nodded to him and he nodded back to me. His daemon glanced at Alfie. I carried on eating my _croissant_, determined to ignore him from now on.

With a deafening rush of steam from the engine and a shaking of brakes and links the train set off again. The scenery around us was green and prosperous with wide-ranging farms and wooded hills. Overhead the sky was mottled blue-and-white.

Soon the train settled back into its gentle swaying rhythm. I fell into a light sleep with Alfie on my lap - just as he had been in my memories of the day before. As our consciousness rose and fell like the swell of the Inland Sea I began to feel that I was drifting among the ghosts of my thoughts. Faces, voices - some of them mine, some Alfie's, some the people I had known all my life, others new, like Sister Moulson or Lieutenant Deveney. At times I was fully awake and looking out of the window at a river, loaded with barges and sailing boats. And then I was slipping backwards and forwards in time. Time past and time future. Time lost and time yet to be won...

I was a little girl on my first day at nursery school, holding tightly to Mummy's hand, trying to be brave for Daddy and her. I was a grown woman, given birth to my first child in an agony of blood and sweat. I was a bride on my wedding night, and Alfie was encircled in my husband's strong, loving hands. I was playing hockey for Highdean School, and about to score the winning goal. My friends stood on the touchline and cheered me. My pony Regulus moved smoothly and powerfully under me as we cantered happily along the bridleways in the hills above Henley. An old woman now, I held out my arms to welcome the grandchildren who had come to stay with me for the summer. I lay on my death-bed at the end of a long, fulfilled life, saying my last goodbyes to Alfie. I wept for my loss, even while I cried out in joy.

Then I was fully awake, or so I thought. The sun was shining directly through the carriage window, casting a shimmering orange glow around the head and shoulders of the man opposite. A thought struck me and I spoke to Alfie:

_Are you doing this?_

_No. Not me. Look..._

The young _ouvrier_ was watching me closely. His mouth wore a slightly crooked smile and his eyes were focussed directly on mine. His eyes... they were as blue as the midday sky, as brilliant as a star held captive at the bottom of a well.

'Are you doing this?' I asked, hardly expecting him to understand my English.

'No. You are,' he replied, leaning forward and holding out his right hand towards me.

He was going to touch me... I shivered with illicit anticipation of that touch, but his hand only brushed against my knee. 'Sorry,' he said. 'You wouldn't happen to have a fag on you, would you?'

'A fag?'

'A cigarette. You know.'

'Yes. Yes, of course.' I pulled a battered packet of Woodbines out of the breast pocket of my tunic. There were only two left in the box, so I offered him one and took the last for myself.

'Thank you. They're terribly bad for you, you know.' He winked at me. 'You shouldn't be smoking; a young girl like you.'

'I know. I can't help it. It helps calm me down.'

'After what happened in Chelsea, you mean.' He struck a match on the sole of his boot and lit my cigarette for me. I took a drag, trying to hide my surprise.

'What do you mean?'

'What I said.'

'How do you know about that?' There was little point in trying to pretend that I didn't know what he was talking about.

'You've been telling me.'

'I have?'

'Yes. All this time, you've been telling me.'

I thought for a moment. 'Who are you?' The young man ignored my question. His magpie-daemon sat on the seat next to him and preened her wings.

'Now listen to me,' he said, leaning forward, 'and listen carefully. This train is going to stop at a level crossing in five minutes or so. I want you to get off at the crossing. Take your kitbag with you. When the train has passed you must walk a mile to the east until you reach a crossroads. There you will find a man who will greet you by name. Go with him. Listen to his story. Do as he says.'

'I can't do that!'

'Why not?'

'Because I don't know who you are. I don't know you from Adam. And besides...'

'Yes?

'I'm under orders. I promised to return to London and report back to Captain Lowther.'

'Do you always obey orders?' The workman's smile was utterly beguiling. Oh, how I _wanted_ him.

'No. But this time I'm going to.'

'What if I were to tell you that the fate of the worlds depends upon your doing as I ask?'

'"Worlds"? Don't you mean "world"? There's only one world, isn't there? And anyway, it's all rubbish. I'm not going to save any worlds. Who do you think I am? I'm Sunny Moon, not some hero.' That idea had been murdered by my treacherous Comrades at the Field Hospital.

'I know who you are, Sunny. I know who you _will_ be, if you get down from this train when it stops. Sunny, look at me.'

I wasn't going to be ordered about like this. I put my hands over my eyes.

'You think that Nancy and Mabel betrayed you. Has it crossed your mind that they might have been trying to _rescue_ you?'

No, it hadn't. Why should it? 'I don't care anyway. I'm going home.'

'Don't pout. It doesn't suit you. Nor does short hair, although it may prove useful some day. Now... Look at me!'

As if I had the choice. I asked my daemon for help. _Alfie!_

_Do what he tells you._

So I did. I looked at him. And I believed.

In a welter of steam and smoke the train disappeared into the distance. The workman leaned out of the carriage window and waved goodbye to me. 'East!' he called out. 'About a mile!' Curious faces looked at us as the train clattered by, but I ignored them. My mind was in confusion, full of disturbing thoughts and images. In particular I was struggling with my desire for the young man. If we had been together in that carriage for very much longer I don't know what I might not have done... It was a _physical_ thing, that yearning; pounding in my breast and shuddering in my loins.

_Aren't we only doing this because..._

_No, Sunny, there's more to it than that._

_There is?_

_Yes. His daemon told me._

_You trust her?_

_Of course._

Of course. Oh well, we were set on our path now and unless we wanted to stand by the trackside for hours on end and try to flag down the next train that passed by we might as well do as we had been told. I bent down, rolled the kitbag onto my shoulder, and with Alfie trotting by my side crossed the railway tracks and walked down the gravel road with the sun high in the sky on my right.

The road led through fields and past the occasional cottage. They were built in different styles - some looked like wooden chalets and others like the stone-built slate-roofed houses of the north of England. I waved to the people I saw working in the fields. They waved back; seeing (as they probably thought) a somewhat undergrown soldier on his way home on leave. Did they have a Bantam Regiment in Frankland? I would have to ask. That is, if I could ever find anybody to ask.

A mile doesn't sound like very far to walk, but it is when it's all uphill and you're carrying a kitbag stuffed full of clothes, various bits and pieces (mess tin, entrenching tool, water bottle, tin cup, prayer book, bible, notepad, pencils, photogram of Gerry, sleeping roll) and an officer's ceremonial sword. Every few yards I stopped, put the bag down for a minute or two and then hoisted it up onto the other shoulder. Still, they were both aching like beggary by the time I reached the top of the slope. My head was itching horribly under my cap. I looked along the road. It zigzagged down the hill like a grey, green-skinned snake. There was the glint of water a little further along. Good - I was starting to feel faint with thirst.

Walking downhill is nearly as hard as walking up. It jars the knees, especially if the surface is hard, as this was. By the time I reached the bottom I was ready to sit down and rest for... for at least half an hour. But where was the crossroads? I was sure I had walked for at least a mile. It felt like twice that distance. I would have to stop soon - I was staggering. I would stop; just as soon as I got to the stream, or wherever the water was that I had seen from the top of the hill.

'Not far now,' said Alfie. I shifted the weight of my kitbag on my aching shoulder and pressed on. And nearly fell into the stretch of water that suddenly opened up in front me.

'You want to look where you're going. You might fall in.'

An English voice! And from somewhere near home... I turned round. Sitting on his knapsack in the shade of a linden tree was a middle-aged man, dressed in a green Norfolk jacket and plus-fours. He was wearing a tweed cap and hiking boots over Argyll patterned socks. He looked for all the world like a grocer on a golfing holiday. He stood up rather unsteadily and held out his right hand. 'Hello, Sonya. Pleased to meet you.'

I put my kitbag down, took his hand in mine and shook it. 'Hello, Goodsir. Are you the person I was told to meet? I was told it would be at a crossroads, but I can't see one. Where is it?'

The man pointed to the water. There is more than one kind of road, young lady. Haven't you heard of the railway? The iron road?'

'Yes, Goodsir.'

'Well, this is the _Canal Rhin-Rhône_. The Rhine-Rhone canal, and just as much of a road as that track you've just walked down.'

'But how do you cross it?'

'By ferry-boat. Look!'

Oh yes. There was a small flat-bottomed boat moored by the side of the canal. A rope trailed from it into the water. The man looked at my face. 'Do you see? You tug on the rope and that pulls the boat across the canal.'

'Yes, Goodsir. I see. Is that what we are going to do now?'

'No.' He smiled, and suddenly looked much younger. A strand or two of fair hair escaped from under his cap. I was still hot from my trudge and not feeling at all sure of myself.

'What are we going to do, then? Are we going to stand here all day and rot?'

If he was at all bothered by my tone of voice he didn't show it. 'No, Sonya. Soon you will see a barge approach. When it does, ask it to stop. Tell them... that we are friends of Arthur Shire. Can you do that?'

'Yes! Of course I can!'

'Good,' he said mildly and sat down again. A twinge of pain creased his face and he held his squirrel-daemon to his chest for a moment. Alfie looked at me reproachfully. _She hurts!_

'But...' I said.

'Yes, Sonya?'

'Don't call me that! Nobody calls me that! I'm Sunny, or I'm Driver Moon.'

'What would you prefer me to call you?'

'Sunny will do for now, Goodsir.' I looked at my boots, feeling myself blush. Could I possibly make any more of an idiot of myself than I had already?

'But... who is Arthur Shire? How can I say I'm his friend? I've never met him.'

'That's not what he says. Now, keep an eye open for barges, would you? We need one that's going north. You'll have to speak to the skipper for us. I never learned any Frankish myself. I didn't go to the kind of school that taught it.' He sat back against a tree-trunk and closed his eyes. Birds chattered in the trees that ran up and down the banks of the canal, and mayflies and fish wrinkled its surface from time to time. It was very quiet.

Half an hour later the peace was disturbed by the slow deep thump of a big gas-engine. A barge; painted red and green, over seventy feet long and around fifteen feet broad, with a tarpaulin-covered hold at the front and a large cabin and wheelhouse at the stern, was approaching from our right. I looked at the man by the tree. He opened his eyes. 'Yes, go on,' he said. 'That'll do nicely.' I stood by the waterside and waved my arms at the passing vessel.

'Monsieur? Monsieur?' A man stuck his head out of the wheelhouse window.

'Oui? Que veux-tu?'

'Monsieur, s'il vous plait? Vous arrêteriez-vous, s'il vous plait?'

'Non! Pourquoi? On est pressés!' Why should he stop, after all? He was in a hurry. This was a commercial craft, not a pleasure-cruiser. The skipper put his head back inside the cabin.

'Monsieur, je vous en prie!' He leaned out again ready, no doubt intending to give me a piece of his mind in the most pungent Frankish he knew.

'Capitaine! Nous sommes des amis d'Arthur Shire!'

'Hein? Quoi? Qui?'

'Arthur Shire!' It was pronounced "Sheer". The skipper's head disappeared again. It looked as if perhaps this name wasn't quite the magic spell I'd been told it was. I looked at the man with the squirrel-daemon. There was something funny about his left arm - what, I couldn't say.

'Hold on,' he said. 'It'll be okay.'

'OK? What's that mean?'

'It means "all right". See?' He pointed to the barge. A great surge of water was washing around its stern. Ah - the skipper had put the engine into reverse. It was stopping! Slowly the bow swung across the canal until it nudged against our side of the bank. The skipper left the wheel, walked down the deck and ran a gangplank to the shore. I picked up my kitbag and, with a little help, passed it across to the barge. I was about to follow it when I felt a hand on my arm.

'Could you help me, please? I'm a little unsteady on these things.' I let him rest his right arm across my shoulder and supported him as we crossed the gangplank. His left leg was stiff and ungainly. Then I returned to the shore and fetched his knapsack for him.

'Thank you, Sunny.' That crease across his face again. 'You'd better introduce us to our captain.'

I turned to the skipper. 'Bonjour, monsieur. Je m'appelle Sunny Moon, et mon ami...' I looked at my companion. 'I'm sorry, Goodsir. I don't know your name.'

'How silly of me,' he said. 'How very remiss. I should have told you before. I'm Peter Joyce, and this is Viola.'

'...et mon ami s'appelle Peter Joyce et Viola.'

The captain held out his hand to us both. 'It is good to meet you,' he said. 'I am called Jacques Fourneaux, and this is Jeanne.' He pointed over the far side of the vessel and I realised what he meant. His dolphin-daemon put her head out of the water and waved a friendly flipper to us.

This was turning into a very strange adventure indeed.


	15. On the Marie Louise

_On the_ Marie-Louise

_When I'm in the middle of a dream,  
Stay in bed, float upstream.  
Please don't wake me, no, don't shake me,  
Leave me where I am - I'm only sleeping._

John Lennon & Paul McCartney

Mister Joyce was sitting by himself in the bows of the _Marie-Louise_. His eyes were closed and I wondered if he were asleep. I supposed I had better not startle him, so I coughed when I was still about six feet away from him.

'Ahem.'

He stirred. Ah, I'd been right - he'd been dozing in the late afternoon sun.

'Hello, Mister Joyce,' I said. Would you like a cuppa?'

'Not if it's that filthy Frankish muck.'

'I'll make it myself. With boiling water. Five minutes standing time. Fresh milk. Do you take sugar?'

'Two chaispoons.'

'Back soon.' I slipped down to the _Marie-Louise_'s galley and lit the stove. When I returned with two steaming hot mugs, it was to find that Mister Joyce had not moved from his place. His eyes had closed again and he was absent-mindedly stroking his daemon Viola.

'Here we are.'

The eyes opened. 'Thank you.' He took one of the mugs from me and sipped from it. 'That's not bad. Where did you learn to make chai?'

'At home.'

'Of course.' He took another sip. I sat down on the deck beside him, Alfie in my lap.

'Mister Joyce?'

'Yes?'

I wonder if... if we could have a talk? There are some things I don't understand.'

'There are plenty of things _I_ don't understand.' For a moment - just a moment - I thought he might have smiled.

According to Capitaine Fourneaux the _Marie-Louise_ was a _peniche_ of 250 tons displacement. She was just a big old barge so far as Alfie and I were concerned, but I smiled and nodded and tried to look interested. Mister Joyce didn't have to pretend. I could tell straight away that the boat and all its workings fascinated him, from the mechanism that steered the vessel to its smoky engine, buried deep in the bottom of the hull. I mean; as if I hadn't been taken over all Daddy's ships! They were the real thing, not dirty little ditch-crawling barges like this. But I was the _capitaine_'s guest, and sailing on a boat - however lowly - was much better than walking.

I acted as a translator between them. Mister Joyce spoke no Frankish at all and Capitaine Fourneaux had little English beyond "Hello", "Goodbye" and "Pleased to meet you." I had never known how useful the stuff they taught me at Highdean was going to turn out to be. Of course they had told us that, but I'd paid no attention to them at the time.

We toured the _peniche_ from bow to stern. Mister Joyce walked in a stiff-legged way that made an odd sound on the steel decking. "Step-bang, step-bang, step-bang". I kept turning around to see what the noise was. When we sat down to eat I noticed that he held the fork in his right hand, like an American.

'Your left arm... have you hurt it? It looks funny.'

'It _is_ funny. See.' Mister Joyce rolled up his left sleeve and I saw what he meant. Oh, Hell. Why hadn't I noticed his hand before...?

'Oh.'

'And while we're talking about personal injuries...' Mister Joyce reached over and clumsily tugged at his left leg, rolling down the sock and revealing the pink-painted wood underneath.

I don't understand. I don't understand why I sat stock-still, like an idiot, staring at his artificial left leg and arm. Hadn't I seen far worse, only a couple of days before in the field hospital? Hadn't I seen maimed soldiers in London? Hadn't I _danced_ with them, for Heaven's sake? So why did Mister Joyce's injuries, which I could tell were old, affect me so badly? Why did I turn my face away from him?

The _capitaine_ had introduced us to his wife and baby. Pale-skinned, fair-haired Emmeline Fourneaux had taken the wheel while her husband helped us aboard the _Marie-Louise_. I took to her and little Guillaume immediately. Alfie and her linnet-formed Marcel chatted in daemon-speak while Emmeline and I swapped stories, dress-sense and grooming tips. She was horrified by the state of my hair. 'Comme tu es jolie!' she said when we met. 'Mais tes cheveux! Tu as été malade?'

No, I told her, I had not been ill. I had cut my hair so I could be like the soldiers. We sat in her cabin and I showed her my sword. 'Vous voyez? Je suis armée, comme des soldats.'

'Ah!' she said, believing she understood. Guillaume chattered and gurgled his baby-talk, and played with his ever-changing daemon Sophie. Cat, bird, dog, cat, bird, dog, cat, bird, dog, grey squirrel...

I gulped and raised my head again. 'Did it happen in the war? Not this war, I mean...' I stopped.

'No, not this war,' said Mister Joyce, rolling his sleeve back down and his sock back up. 'It was a different war.'

'In the Rheinland?' They'd told us about that at school, in Contemporary History. The Doytch and the Franks had fought over the land adjoining the river Rhein. There had been a long siege at a town called Colmar. Horrible things had happened there, which our teachers hadn't told us about. Not in detail, at any rate.

'No, not there.'

'Where, then?'

'Oxford.'

'Oxford? But there wasn't a war in Oxford. There's never been a war in Oxford! I don't understand.'

_Careful_, said Alfie.

Mister Joyce grimaced and rubbed his wooden arm. 'It still hurts, you know,' he said.

'Your arm still hurts? How long ago did it, er, happen?'

'Nineteen years, now. It's hard to believe sometimes.'

'What happened? Was there an accident?'

'You could say that.' Mister Joyce's eyes were bleak. 'A house fell on us.' He stroked his Viola with his right hand.

'A house? How? Why? In a war? Which war?'

'A car exploded. It _was_ a war, but you've not heard of it. Can you leave us in peace now, please? I'm very tired.'

_And in pain_, added Alfie.

'Yes, Mister Joyce. Sorry, Mister Joyce.'

The _Marie-Louise_ was to be our home for the next few days. Mister Joyce and Capitaine Fourneaux bunked down in the spare cabin and Emmeline, Guillaume and I slept in the main stateroom. I say slept, but I was feeling unsettled and I think it rubbed off on Guillaume. He woke up crying every couple of hours and refused to go to sleep until Emmeline put him to the breast. When morning came we were all short of sleep. That was nothing new for me by now.

I felt I should be doing something to earn my passage, so I slipped out of bed, walked down the short passageway to the galley and put the kaffee pot on the stove. Mister Joyce would have to do without chai this morning. I found some cheese in the cool box down by the waterline and put it on a white delft plate. By this time the pot was boiling. I took it off the stove and shovelling kaffee grounds into it. Right - five minutes' brewing time. Just long enough.

The barge was moored up at a little village wharf which stood just above a lock. Alfie and I climbed up on deck, ran ashore and knocked on the door of the combined lock-keeper's house and village shop. Two francs and some schoolgirl Frankish later and I was armed with two baguettes and a _demi-livre_ of butter. We dashed back to the canalside, clattered across the gangplank and into the wheelhouse. A short companionway led down to the cabins underneath, which were surprisingly spacious. Mister Joyce said that English canal boats were very cramped by comparison, and I wondered if he were a waterman himself. I knew so little about him... I would have to ask him some more questions. Perhaps he would be less tired today, and more willing to talk.

Bread - two beautiful, fresh, crusty, aromatic Frankish _baguettes_ spread with unsalted butter and slices of Emmental cheese - washed down with black kaffee looked like a splendid breakfast to me, and the _capitaine_ and his wife seemed to appreciate it. Then they unpegged the mooring ropes and Monsieur Fourneaux took his position at the wheel. I passed more hunks of bread up to him and Madame Fourneaux brought the pot into the wheelhouse as we navigated our way into the lock. He shouted to the lockkeeper to open the top gates and let us in, and took a sizeable gulp of boiling-hot kaffee.

I had got more or less used to the locks by now, with their dripping walls, thudding wooden gates and mysterious watery-vegetable smell. The lockkeeper closed the top gates and opened the bottom sluices, letting the water out of the lock. Emmeline and I held onto the line which she had flung in a life-long practised way over the bollards along the top of the walls. I knew she didn't need my help, but all the same I was glad to give it.

All this time, I wondered - where was Mister Joyce? He hadn't appeared for breakfast, although the _capitaine_ must have woken him when he got up. I supposed that he had gone back to sleep again.

I let the rope slip slowly through my hands as the water level went down. Slowly, slowly, we descended the last few inches and then the bottom gates opened with a creak and we were free to carry on. Emmeline threw a fifty-centime coin to the lockkeeper. He touched his forelock gravely - just like the farmworkers did at home - and his otter-daemon did likewise.

The sun was rising ahead of us. All was still, quiet, misty and grey-green. Nothing stirred the water ahead of our bow-wave and the slow whump-whump-whump of the _Marie-Louise_'s engine was no more than the boat's steady heart-beat; telling us that she was alive and well. I sat with Alfie in the wheelhouse, watching Capitaine Fourneaux's strong brown hands work the controls. His dolphin-daemon Jeanne splashed by our side and I wondered what it would be like to have a daemon who occupied another element. How would they touch one another? Perhaps the _capitaine_ swam with her when he could. It was hard to see how they could ever sleep next to each other.

After a while, Emmeline came up with little Guillaume and gave him to me to hold while she saw to the week's washing. I was apprehensive to begin with - what if he needed changing or started crying again? But I needn't have worried - first his Sophie settled into vole-form and dozed off, then he followed her into sleep. Occasionally he muttered and moved in his sleep, and Sophie changed form in hers, matching his dreams. I think Alfie and I stayed awake for only another ten minutes after them.

I dreamed. I hadn't dreamed much lately - I'd been too tired. So much had happened since I left England. How long ago was it? Let's see - we'd left Pompey on Monday evening and reached Frankland the following day. Then two day's driving - nearly - to St-Claude and three days or so at the field hospital. A day and a half to the crossroads. One night on board the _peniche_. Nine days in all, more or less, so today must be Wednesday. All this I worked out in my dreams, together with a nightmare where I was running down the corridor of a train, swinging my sword and lopping the heads off the passengers. They were all women, I realised, in a quick lucid flash. They were all women that I was killing. Then Gerry was there too, only his eyes were a strange cobalt-cornflower blue - and then he was Private Fraser, and then his hair went fair and floppy and he was Mister Joyce, chubby-cheeked and sad-eyed, sitting at the top of the _Marie-Louise_'s mainmast - for she was a sailing ship now, heaving and splashing across the Mandarin Sea, in hot pursuit of spice-pirates, firing flaming bolts of paraffin wax at the whale-daemons the pirates rode.

'Hein, hein, hoy!' the pirates cried, boarding our ship with mortal-sharp officer's swords clenched between their teeth. One took his sword in his hand and spat a great gob of tobacco at my feet. 'Ugh!' I said. 'What terrible manners! What would your mother say?'

'What,' he said, and his teeth were many, and sharp-pointed, and black with leaf-juice, 'would your mother say about _you_? What, eh?' and he lifted his sword high.

'Don't, Mummy!' I screamed, only it came out all squeaky, like a mouse.

Then he was Aunt Sybil and Daddy all wrapped up together. 'Go back to school, you naughty girl,' the Sybil/Daddy said. 'Iron your blouse. Finish your essays. Learn the Periodic Table of Elements. Clean your shoes. Get a haircut. Write out five hundred times "I will not run on the Chapel Flagstones". Come and see me when you have finished and I will send you to polish the tennis courts with a toothbrush. You do have your toothbrush, don't you?'

'I... I... I think so. It's in my kitbag.'

'No, you haven't! No, it isn't! Fibber! Nasty Fibber! Where is your toothbrush? Where? Where? Where? Where is it? Where?'

'Here! Look, it's here!' I tried to show the pirate/Sybil/Daddy my ebony-handled toothbrush, but it wasn't a toothbrush, it was a marlin-spike.

'You stole it! It's not yours. Thief! Thief!'

'No!'

'Liar! Thief! Join us. Join us on the Perilous Seas Of The South. Sail with us to the Anti-Pole, where the Noah-Birds flap and splash! Be a Bastard Of The Ocean, and crew with Captain Will The Beardless. Kill with us. Kill the monkey-women. Kill the Comrades Three! Kill yourself and die with us for ever. Be a pirate's moll, a seaman's slut, a forecastleman's Jenny... Sit astride a ten-pounder cannon, light the fuse and strew the decks with bloodied Excise-Men!'

'No! Yes! No! Yes! Death or Glory!' I ripped a tear in the sky with my dream-sword and awoke.

'Mam'zelle? Mam'zelle?' It was the _capitaine_, shaking my shoulder. Guillaume was still in my lap, whimpering slightly, his Sophie flickering between forms faster than I could follow. I had disturbed him.

Emmeline came up from her work below to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently I'd been crying out aloud in my dreams. Shouting, even.

Mister Joyce was sitting at the wheelhouse table. In front of him was a collection of bits and pieces, mostly made of brass. Wheels, cogs, spindles, gears, springs, pointers, keys, all that sort of thing. He must have come up from the men's cabin - for that was what we were calling it, as a joke - while I was asleep. I wondered what he was up to, so I sat down at the table opposite him, casting a shadow across it.

'Don't do that,' he said, not looking at me. 'You're blocking the light.' His daemon Viola glared at my direction.

'Sorry.' I moved over a bit. 'What're you doing?'

'The ship's chronometer had stopped. I'm mending it.'

'Does the captain know you're playing with his clock?'

Mister Joyce looked up and his eyes flashed with anger. 'I am not "playing" with it, as you put it. I am repairing it. Of course he knows.'

'Oh good,' I said lamely. 'Do you know about clocks, then?'

Mister Joyce shook his head. 'Heaven help us!' was all he said.

'Does that mean "yes"?' I asked.

'Yes. It means "yes". It means that I am a Master of the Guild of Temporalists. It means that I am well-versed in all the skills and mysteries of the clockmaker's art.'

'So you're a clockmaker, then.'

'Yes. I'm a clockmaker. Now beggar off and leave me in peace.'

It looked as if I was not doing very well with him. Got off on the wrong foot, you might say.

All that day we travelled through the Frankish countryside, stopping for lunch and whenever we came across a lock or a swingbridge. Our pace was slow - no more than a brisk walk - but our cargo of coal and gravel didn't mind and neither, apparently, did our crew. I dozed, or helped with the ropes, or made chai and kaffee, or walked around the deck with a mop. Mister Joyce put the clock back together and reattached it to the bulkhead next to the engine's oil-gauge. Then he sat in the bows again or went down to the cabin. He seemed to spend quite a lot of time there.

It was hard for me and Alfie, not having very much to do. We weren't used to that, not after our time in Mornington and the field hospital. With Mister Grumpy Joyce occupying the forward part of the boat we naturally stayed in the stern. There was a question I wanted to - needed to - ask him, but it would have to wait until he was in a better mood. It was too noisy to go below deck - the vibration from the engine got _everywhere_ - so I mostly stayed in the wheelhouse and watched the countryside drift by. I had, as I say, little to do and I didn't want to get in the way. I wished I'd brought a book with me so I'd have something to read, but all I had was my notebook and some pencils.

The war seemed very far away. Even though we were less than a hundred miles from the Front, there was no sign of the fighting. No sound of guns or rockets, no bursting of shells, no gyropters buzzing overhead, no stealthy Zeppelins sneaking through the clouds. The canal nestled into the landscape and when we came to a town it was by the back door, so to speak. Often we missed the towns and villages altogether. Every hour or two we passed through a lock. The _capitaine_ would exchange greetings and news with the lockkeeper in Frankish that was too quick and idiomatic for me to understand.

The day ended as the previous one had, with the _Marie-Louise_ tied up on the outskirts of a small town and Emmeline cooking (with my help) a _daube_ of beef and herbs in the galley. All right, I peeled potatoes and chopped vegetables rather than doing any actual cooking. All the same, it went down well and even Mister Joyce looked happier by the time the meal finished. In fact, we all felt happier. It must have been something to do with the bottle of red wine we had to drink.

The next day was the same, and the day after and the day after that. The weather stayed fine. I sat in the timber-framed wheelhouse while Mister Joyce rested in the bows. Jeanne swam alongside and chatted to Alfie from time to time. Guillaume was shared out between us, although I was glad to see that he seemed to prefer to stay with me. Perhaps I hadn't upset him too much, that first day. Alfie talked to Sophie, educating her, he said.

I doodled on my notepad. Ideas, dream-thoughts, little pictures of home, or Gerry. I thought of writing to him, but somehow I never got round to it. The canal was becoming busier, so that we sometimes had to wait our turn when we came to a lock, but the land nearby never seemed to be very occupied. It would have been so different at home. Our fields would have been full of our men - ploughing, harrowing, planting; looking after the stock, milking the cows, minding the sheep, mending fences. Our estates were properly run. Daddy saw to that, or his agents did.

Where had everybody gone? Where were all the men and women? I could have asked Capitaine Fourneaux or Emmeline, but something stopped me. Instead I wrote these lines in my notebook:

_The plough and the harrow stand quiet by the lee of the hill.  
The byre is abandoned, the cockerel crows for no dawn.  
The furrow lies barren, the rickyard is empty and still.  
The fields are burnt stubble, the fog-shrouded meadow is cold and alone._

At the edge of the highway the poppies' blood chases the green,  
From the countryside into the town where it splashes and streams,  
Down the streets to the factories where ev'ry machine,  
Stands unmoving and wasting away in the dark like my wishes, my hopes and my dreams.

Where is the sweetheart who kissed me goodbye at the door?  
Where is the clerk, the smith and the millhand, the fair  
Brother, the father, the lover, the son and yet more;  
Where is the huntsman, and where is the fellow who follows the plough and the pair?

I stopped writing. I knew where they were, all those men and boys. I had seen them in the wards and the operating theatres of the field hospital. My inspiration failed me suddenly and completely. All I had left was one last line:

_A kiss for the lad who is gone; the lad who will never endure to grow old._

I had a question to ask Mister Grumpy, so I waited until after a specially good supper of stewed rabbit, potatoes and carrots, washed down by _two_ bottles of _vin rouge_ this time. We sat back from the wheelhouse table - it doubled as a dining table - and Monsieur Fourneaux lit his pipe. I was out of cigarettes, unless you counted the incredibly strong _Nuages Noirs_ I'd bought in a little _bar-tabac_ the day before. One puff was... interesting. Two puffs were definitely very interesting and after the third, with my head buzzing, my eyes streaming and my stomach heaving, I'd thrown the ciggie over the side. _And a good riddance too_, said Alfie.

Emmeline brought us some kaffee. Perhaps this was a good time to put my question to Goodsir Joyce. 'Mister Joyce?' I said.

'Yes?'

'I wonder... could you tell me who Arthur Shire is?' Capitaine Fourneaux looked up from his newssheet. 'You told me to tell Capitaine Fourneaux that we were friends of Arthur Shire and I did, although I've never heard of him. Obviously our skipper knows about him, but I don't. Will you tell me?'

Mister Joyce looked at me, and then he looked at the _capitaine_. Monsieur Fourneaux shook his head. I quickly revised my opinion of his knowledge of English.

'No.'

'No? Why not?'

He ignored my question. '"No" means "no", young lady.'

I stood up. 'Why not? Why won't you tell me?'

'Because you don't need to know. Now sit down!' I remained standing.

'Look, Mister Master Clockmaker Joyce. I was told to meet you by a man I met on the train. Was he Arthur Shire? Tell me!' I could feel my face turning bright red.

'Sit down!' Mister Joyce's voice, which was normally soft with a not unattractive Oxfordshire accent, was harsh with anger. 'Sit down, you stupid little girl!'

I sat down. 'But look,' I pleaded. 'You've got to tell me. Aren't we in this together? Weren't we told to meet up so that we could do something together? Something important. It must be something important.' I was starting to sniffle.

'You think it's important because you're involved. Stars in Heaven, but you've got a big head!'

'Look,' I replied. 'Maybe I am big-headed. Maybe I'm not. At least I'm not a grouchy old cripple with a wooden leg and a chip on his shoulder... Oh God...' I stumbled to my feet and lurched out of the wheelhouse door onto the deck and leaned over the stern, letting my tears fall into the water. I could hear voices behind me in the wheelhouse. Alfie clung to my tunic.

_Sunny, why? Why did you say that?_

_It was awful... I don't know. Why doesn't he like me? Why doesn't Mister Joyce like me?_

_I don't know yet. Viola won't talk to me either. But Sunny, that was unforgivable._

_I know. I know. It must have been the wine... Oh, Hell. I've got to go back in there and say I'm sorry, haven't I?_

_Yes, you have._

_Or get off the boat now and run away._

_Run away? Again?_

_We keep doing that, don't we? Running away._

_It's time we stopped._

_Yes, you're right. It is._

I turned around and went back into the wheelhouse. Everyone fell silent, even little Guillaume. I took a deep breath.

'Mister Joyce, I'm very sorry. That was a terrible thing to say, and it was dreadful of me to say it.'

'Yes,' said Mister Joyce, 'it was. You should never mock anybody's infirmity.'

'No, you're right. I shouldn't have. I'm sorry.'

'Hmmm.'

'Assieds-toi,' said Emmeline Fourneaux. 'Encore de kaffee?' I sat down and took the cup she offered me. There was cognac mixed in with it, and I gave her a little bow in thanks.

'But look...' I said after a few minutes.

'Yes?'

'Who _is_ Arthur Shire?'

Mister Joyce held up his hands - the real and the artificial - in exasperation. 'Stars above! Heaven help us! Heaven save us from nosy-parker girls!'

I giggled and Guillaume chuckled in appreciation.

'All right,' and Mister Joyce leaned over the table. 'I give up. Arthur Shire is a Gyptian. He's a boatman, and most of the time he plys his boats up and down the canals of Brytain, carrying whatever cargoes people will give him to transport. It's a hard life, like the life the captain and his wife and baby lead.'

'It doesn't look hard.'

'That's because it's summer and there's lots of work on. Lots of war work. It pays well, they say.'

'I see.'

'Perhaps you do. Anyway, you've heard of the Gyptian folk, probably. They've not got a very good reputation. They're travelling people, and they're not trusted by landsfolk. "Thieves - here today, gone tomorrow," they say and, "Off with the raggle-taggle Gyptians, oh," they sing.'

I nodded. We'd sung that song at school.

'Well, Arthur Shire is very high up in Gyptian society. For a start, he's the master and owner of his boats. But more... I can't tell you much more. Not yet. Maybe never. But he's well enough known for our hosts here to recognise his name and take us on board simply because we claimed to be his friends.'

'And are you his friend?'

'Yes, I am. I'm very proud to say it. We've seen things, and done things, together that very few other people have. He's an oracle, you see. He's... _connected_ with the deeper world beneath us and the greater world above us. I really mustn't say any more.'

'Is that because you don't trust me? I don't tell tales, you know. Not even under torture!' I grinned.

Mister Joyce did not smile in return. '"Not even under torture", eh? That's good. That's very good, Sonya. Because that's what it may come to, before all this is over. Yes, indeed it may.'

He emptied his cup of kaffee, stood up with his right hand holding on to the table for assistance and hobbled downstairs to the sleeping quarters below, his squirrel-daemon riding in the crook of his left arm.

_Oh my good grief_, said Alfie.

_Good grief_, indeed. And what about the other questions I'd wanted to ask him? For example; where are you going? Why are you going there? Why am I going there with you, if that's what I'm doing? How did you get here, with your gammy leg and all?

_Better not ask that one_, said Alfie.

_No, better not. I think I've done quite enough damage for one day._

_I think you have_, said Alfie.


	16. In the Sight of God

_In the Sight of God_

_Smoke on the water,   
Fire in the sky._

Deep Purple

'Sonya...'

I looked up. It was Mister Joyce, come up from his cabin. 'Yes?'

'Is it all right if I sit here?'

'Yes, of course. You can sit wherever you like, Mister Joyce.'

'Thank you.' He sat down next to me, in his curious shuffling sideways manner. He sort of slid into place, rather than sitting down like normal people did. 'It's a pleasant morning.'

'Yes, it is.'

It was the day after my outburst in the wheelhouse. I was sitting in the stern of the _Marie-Louise_, with the bulk of the wheelhouse between me and the sun, which was getting hotter, it seemed, by the minute. Every now and then I had to get up and move round to keep in the shade.

'You can call me Sunny, you know. Most people do, even the grown-ups.'

He looked at me. 'Except your teachers.'

'Yes, and Captain Lowther. She called me Driver Moon most of the time.'

'You're in the Ambulance Brigade, aren't you?'

_How had he know that?_ 'Yes, Goodsir. When I'm allowed to be. They sent me home, you know.'

'Yes, I know that.' His squirrel-daemon crouched on the railing.

'And then I met a man on the train. I suppose you know that too.'

'Yes, I do.'

I sat still for a moment or two. We would have to move again soon if we wanted to stay out of the sun. I wondered if he would let me help him.

'I've had some training, assisting people. Only on the job, but I can help you get about.'

He turned to look at me, and I wondered if I had put my foot in it again.

'That's kind of you, Son... Sunny, but I can get about quite well by myself. I have to stay in practice or I'll forget how to do it.'

'You mean...'

'I mean I could very easy become lazy and let myself be wheeled about everywhere.'

I looked about us. 'That wouldn't work on a boat, would it?'

'No.' He definitely smiled then. It was a nice smile, and I wondered why he didn't use it more often.

'You said last night there were things you wouldn't tell me because I didn't need to know them. Are there any things you _can_ tell me? Like, how old are you?'

'I'm forty-two, since you ask.' Oh. I'd thought he was older than that. He certainly looked it.

'Where do you come from?'

'Where do I live, do you mean? Oxford.'

'I thought so. That's not far from us. We're from near Goring.'

'I know.'

I fought down a surge of anger. He knew, did he? Well, bully for him, Mister Clever-Clogs Joyce!

'Do you make clocks, or just mend them?' I had a vision of him sitting in a stall in the Covered Market in Oxford.

'Both,' he replied.

'It is a big company you work for?'

'Yes, quite big.'

'What's it called?' Maybe I'd heard of it, maybe I hadn't.

'James, Cholmondley, Joyce and Joyce. We've got shops in Oxford, Charlton Kings, Brummagem, London - two, actually - Mancunia, Worcester, Aldbrickham, Wykham, Soton, Truro, Cassiobury and Houghton.We were planning on opening in Argyll and Cambria before this war business blew up. Oh, and there're workshops in Brum and a factory in Tring, in Hertfordshire. My brother Tom runs that for me.'

'Oh. Oh, I see. So the Joyce in James, Cholmondley, Joyce and Joyce is... you?'

'The first one, yes. The second one's my brother.'

'So you're in charge, then?'

'Sort of, but not exactly. It's more like a partnership. Mistress James manages the books and the accounts, Mister Cholmondley is responsible for business development and sales, I'm the master craftsman and chief engineer.'

'Mistress James?'

'She's my old master's widow.'

'Oh, I see. When did your master die?'

'Nearly twenty years ago.'

'She must be quite old, then.'

'Over seventy. She's very alert, though. Nothing gets past her.'

'I don't suppose it does. So, Mister Cholmondley is the salesman...'

'Yes.'

'...and you do all the tricky stuff with clocks and mechanics and springs and stuff.'

'Yes.'

'I get it. It's just like the way it is at home. Daddy's the boss, but he has a factor who looks after the business and sales, and agents who make sure the farms are being run properly. He doesn't have a factory, though. That sounds really good. What do you make there? Apart from clocks?'

'We used to make lots of clocks. All sorts of clocks. Chances are, if you go anywhere by train you'll see one of our clocks hanging over the station platforms. We look after the clock in the tower of the Great Parliament in London as well. We didn't make it, of course. It's much too old for that.'

'So what do you make now?'

'Well, we still make quite a few clocks but we also do munitions work. Mister Cholmondley's idea. We make clockwork timers - fuses, you know. I probably shouldn't be telling you. I expect it's a state secret.' Was Mister Joyce looking uncomfortable?

'Fuses for bombs? I thought they were something you lit with a match - like a piece of string.'

'Only in comic books and cartoon kinos!' Mister Joyce laughed. 'No, real bombs and torpedoes have clockwork timers so they go off at exactly the right time. They're very precise. We make the best timer fuses in the world, bar none.'

Torpedoes... Something tugged at me inside. I took a deep breath. 'When did you first start making fuses for torpedoes?'

'Seven or eight years ago. It... it pays very well.'

'And who do you sell them to?' A dreadful suspicion was growing in my mind. _Alfie, you don't think... Oh no..._

'To start off with, anyone. Elias - Mister Cholmondley, that is - is a brilliant salesman. He travels all over the place. Sunny - what's the matter?'

I stood up. There were hammers thumping in my head, like the _Marie-Louise_'s gas engine. 'You bloody well know what it is. You bastard - don't say you don't know!

'I'm sorry - what do you mean?'

'You know all about me, don't you? Somebody told you all about me. Somebody like that Arthur Shire you're so bloody keen on.' I was standing facing Mister Joyce now, looking down at him. I could have kicked him very easily if I'd felt like it and, by the Blessed Holy Spirit, that was exactly what I wanted to do.

_Sunny. It wasn't his fault..._ Alfie leapt to my shoulder.

_Wasn't it? Wasn't it??_ I was seized by a deadly certainty.

'Listen to me, Mister oh-so-bloody-clever Master Craftsman Joyce who knows everything. Did Mister Arthur Bloody Shire tell you about my brother? Did he tell you about Gerry? Do you know about him? Do you know his ship was sunk by the Enemy? With a torpedo? With a torpedo with one of your effing _precise_ fuses in it? Did he tell you _that_, you sodding bastard Goodsir Joyce? You effing murderer!' I was screaming at the top of my voice. Capitaine Fourneaux turned and looked at us and Emmeline picked up Guillaume with a look of worry on her face. I lifted my right foot. I was going to kick Mister Joyce in the guts, as hard as ever I could.

_No, Sunny. Don't. Don't._

_Why not, Alfie? Give me one good reason why not._

_Look at him..._

I wasn't going to, but Alfie made me. Mister Joyce was weeping. At first I thought it was because he was afraid I was going to hurt him - and I _was_ - but no. Alfie was talking to Viola, in rapid daemon-speak that I couldn't follow. Then he spoke to me. I had never heard him so pleading or so desperate.

_Sit down, Sunny. Don't hurt him. Beautiful Sunny, sit down for me. Please, lovely Sunny, please. Do it for me. Sit down and listen to what Mister Joyce has to say. Please._

_Alfie... You do know how to get round a girl , don't you?_ I reluctantly sat down and listened. This had better be good...

- 0 -

Of course I didn't think I was the only person in the world who had ever lost somebody they loved. I'd seen plenty of dead, dying and injured men by then. But when Mummy died, and then Gerry, it was awful but it was remote. It happened somewhere else - in hospital or at sea, and I was told about it afterwards. And as for the soldiers - I hadn't known them. Not personally. So when Mister Joyce told me about the day he found Professor Lyra Belacqua lying dead in her rooms in Jordan College, and the time when he got to Oxford only just in time to say a few last words to his master before he, too, died, I realised that even though I'd seen a lot of pain and suffering in my life, it wasn't all there was. There was always more, and worse, lying in wait just around the corner.

_He loved both of them very much_, said Alfie.

_That's all very well. All right, I'm sorry for him. Sorry for them, too. But all the same, he killed Gerry._

_You don't know that. It might not have been a Joyce fuse in that torpedo. And it wouldn't have been_ him _in any case. He didn't fire the torpedo that sunk Gerry's ship._

_He was part of it. "For the want of a nail, the battle was lost." Yes? Remember it? His fuse was the nail that gave the enemy their victory._

_I think he knows that._

_Well, I hope he's bloody well ashamed of himself!_

- 0 -

Emmeline called us in for lunch. Rather, she called me to help her prepare it. I was glad of the chance to do something useful. Mister Joyce sat where I had left him, with his eyes closed.

_He's remembering, said Alfie._

_Remembering what? Oh, pass me that paring knife, would you?_

_Remembering another boat, in another world. With another girl._ I dug the eyes out of a potato with a vicious twist of the knife.

_How do you know?_

_Viola told me. He's a very unusual man, our Mister Joyce. There's still a great deal we don't know about him._

_I don't care much. Look, Alfie, it's been not too bad these past few days, except for him,_ and I cut a blackened piece off one end of a potato, _but I still don't know what we're meant to be doing. I don't know why we're here and I don't know where we're going. I suppose we've_ got _to go with him, haven't we?_

_Yes, we have._

_You're not still holding back on me, are you?_

_Sunny, I..._

I nearly threw the knife down in disgust. _Why am I always the last to find out what's happening?_

_Sunny, be patient._

_Pah!_

- 0 -

Mister Joyce was late for lunch. Typical man. First he sat around dreaming for hours, then he went and disappeared into the men's cabin for fifteen minutes while our lunch stood on the table, getting cold. When he did finally turn up, it was with a bombshell.

'Sunny...'

'Miss Moon, if you don't mind.'

'Miss Moon, then. We have to leave the _Marie-Louise_ before we get to the next lock. Could you tell Capitaine Fourneaux, please?'

'Why do we have to leave now?'

'I can't tell you.'

'Well stuff you, then.'

'Su... Miss Moon. You are here, and I am here, because we were told to be here. Yes?'

'Yes. But I've had enough of being told what to do.'

'No doubt.' Mister Joyce was grim-faced. 'But you've got no choice.'

'You must do what Monsieur Joyce says,' said the _capitaine_. 'I can take you no further.'

I had been right, then, about his knowledge of English. Everybody - _everybody_ - was hiding things from me.

'Suppose I say no.'

'Listen to me,' and Mister Joyce's dead left hand knocked against the top of the wheelhouse table, 'If you stay on board, and if the _Marie-Louise_ continues on her present course, then this boat will be destroyed and everybody on board will be killed. Everybody.'

'What? What are you talking about? That's rubbish! How do you know, anyway?'

'I know. I can't say how.'

I turned to the _capitaine._ 'Do you believe him?' I asked.

'Yes, I do. I trust Mister Joyce absolutely.'

I slapped the table with the palms of my hands. 'Well isn't that just fine and dandy!'

- 0 -

'Moor up under those trees, just above the lock,' said Mister Joyce. 'We'll have our best chance there.'

Engine chugging slowly in reverse, the _Marie-Louise_ edged to the side of the canal a few tens of yards from the lock. A grove of beech trees overhung the towpath, giving it shelter. The sun had been shining down on us all morning but was now concealed behind a bank of clouds. As the barge nudged against the reeds which grew at the water's edge, Emmeline threw the gangplank ashore and ran after it, holding Guillaume in her arms. Their daemons followed them to the grassy strip where the trees met the towpath. I collected my kitbag and Mister Joyce's knapsack and took them ashore.

Next I took hold of Mister Joyce's shoulder. I was tempted to ask Alfie to Change and help us, but I remembered the horrible thing that had happened to us the last time he did that so I didn't. We sidled down the gangplank and joined Emmeline and Guillaume. Mister Joyce looked up at the sky anxiously. I wondered why.

It was only right that Jacques Fourneaux, the captain of the _Marie-Louise_, should be the last to leave. He stopped the engine and left the wheelhouse, shutting and locking the door behind him. Then he walked very slowly down the gangplank to the canalside. He didn't join the rest of us under the trees, but walked a few yards from his vessel and sat down on the towpath, facing the water. For a second I didn't understand why he didn't come over and sit with us, but then I realised. It was obvious, really.

It seemed that we stayed where we were for hours. The sun came out again and a breeze blew up, ruffling the surface of the canal and shaking the leaves which shaded our heads. It was very peaceful and quiet - there was nothing to be heard but the sound of moving air and, in the distance, the shouts of a crew working their _peniche_ through the lock, about fifty yards away. _We can't stay here for ever_, I thought.

So it seemed, did Mister Joyce. He kept looking around in a worried manner. What was he looking for? Why did he keep looking up towards the sky? Were we about to be attacked from above - by a Zeppelin, or a squadron of gyropters? I touched his shoulder.

'Mister Joyce? What should we be looking out for?'

'Watch the skies,' he replied.

- 0 -

What happened less than five minutes later is hard for me to describe. I didn't understand it then, and I can't say I understand it very much now. At the time, it was as if the wrath of God had been poured down on us.

Capitaine Fourneaux was sitting, as I've mentioned, on the edge of the canal, with his feet in the water. I watched as his dolphin-daemon Jeanne nuzzled against his legs and he stroked her forehead with a slow steady rhythm. They were talking to one another, I could tell. I'd seen them like this before, every evening after supper. They looked very happy together and Alfie and I smiled to see them so contented. It was looking more and more as if nothing was going to happen and we could soon carry on with our journey. Mister Joyce had been making a fuss over nothing.

Then something did happen. Something strange, unusual, but not so very threatening. Not to begin with - it was actually rather beautiful. A grid - a criss-cross of green light - suddenly appeared in the sky above us, completely covering its dome from the hills to the north and east to the open plains to the south. The lines that made up the grid sparkled and pulsed slowly. I could not see where the grid had come from, but I watched it in fascination as it whirled and spun about out heads. Then in the blink of an eye it changed, so that it looked like the lines of latitude and longitude do on a globe when you look down on it from the North Pole. It was like the pattern the wires make on a dartboard. It moved around the sky in a slow hypnotic dance before settling with the bulls-eye of the dartboard more or less directly over our heads. I was beginning to feel a little uneasy. What was it? Why was it so interested in us?

Then the grid vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, and I relaxed again. Was that it? Was that all? Could we go back to the _Marie-Louise_ now and carry on? I wondered who else had seen the glowing green lines, and what they had made of them. But before I could say anything about it, a low humming noise started; almost inaudible at first, but growing in volume until it was about as loud as the sound a streetcar makes. It felt more like a pressure on the ears than a sound you could hear. I noticed that the surface of the canal had become absolutely flat, as if somebody had laid a piece of glass on top of it. The air above this mirror-flat water was infused with a greenish haze. At the same time, I felt my hair - which had grown to be about an inch long by now - standing up on end.

I turned to ask Mister Joyce what was going on, but he was standing up - somehow he had got to his feet without help - and was shouting to Capitaine Fourneaux and Jeanne.

'Get out of the water! Both of you! Now! Get out now!' he bellowed. I called out to Mister Joyce. 'Why? What's wrong? Where should we...' but I never finished my sentence. A lance of indigo light crashed down from the open, blameless sky and stood - a miles-high pillar of fire - impaled in the water of the Rhine-Rhone Canal, half-way between us and the lock. It was white at its heart, surrounded by jabbing spikes of searing violet. It _hurt_. My eyes closed tight-shut in self-defence, leaving a red after-image in the inside of my eyelids. It was like the fiercest bolt of lightning you ever saw; and with it came a terrible boom and crash of thunder, louder than anything you ever heard. Louder than guns, louder than rockets, louder than bombs, edged with an eerie, sizzling crackle and a wail of tormented air, squeezing my insides like the tightest of belts or a lunatic's strait-jacket.

I felt like the Prophets of Yahweh must have done when the Pharaoh of Ygypt was overthrown by the Majesty of the All-Highest. The God-light bloomed, and the thunder of His anger echoed in the land around us. God was looking directly down on us, and the light of His eyes was blinding and terrible.

And then it stopped, and the shock of its ending was as awful as that of its coming. It had lasted, I found out later, for only fifty thousandths of a second.

- 0 -

The _Marie-Louise_ had a steel hull and that, according to Mister Joyce, was what saved her from immediate destruction. The charge had slipped past her, or something like that. It was "short-circuited", he said afterwards. The gangplank, however, was wooden, and as the beam struck the water it burst into flame, scattering glowing splinters towards us. Then there was a white flash of steam from underneath the hull and the whole vessel lifted out of the canal for several seconds, before falling back with a terrific splash that soaked us all. The water slopped and surged against the canal banks.

The _Marie-Louise_ was safe, but not her skipper. Neither Jacques Fourneaux nor his daemon had had enough time to get clear of the water and they'd taken the full impact of the lightning-bolt. Jeanne was thrown spinning into the air. She twisted and writhed and howled in pain as her body, trailing black smoke and wrapped in flickering orange fire, was catapulted out of the water by the force of the blast and landed on the towpath next to us. Simultaneously, Capitaine Fourneaux's clothes burst into flames. I stood up and ran towards him, thinking that I could maybe roll him in the grass and put out the fire, but I was too late; not that it would have done any good. I caught only the briefest glimpse of his charred head and blackened face as his body pitched forward and fell into the canal, its glowing embers extinguished in a final hiss and rush of vapour. Jeanne screamed one last agonising time and faded from sight.

_Oh no. Oh no._ That didn't have to happen. Why hadn't Jeanne got out of the water and lain on the bank with the rest of us? She could have done, couldn't she, for half an hour or so, even though she was a water-daemon? She'd have been safe then, and the _capitaine_ would still be alive now. I turned and ran past Emmeline and Guillaume into the grove of trees, crashing into their trunks and branches in my blindness, and was violently sick.

- 0 -

'Orbital strike,' said Mister Joyce eventually, his voice quivering with shock. 'They called down an orbital strike on us, for the love of Christ. How could they do such a thing? Heaven have mercy on us!'

'I'm sorry,' I said, still heaving and shaking with the horror of it all, 'but I don't understand. What's an orbital strike?' We had gathered together in the heart of the beech-grove, Mister Joyce, Emmeline, Guillaume and me. Guillaume was whimpering and clinging to his mother, his daemon frozen in mouse-form. Emmeline stared straight ahead, rigid in shock. I had seen that look before, in the eyes of the wounded soldiers in the admissions ward of the field hospital.

He made no attempt to answer my question. 'We must go,' he said. 'We must go now. Now! Before they can recharge their weapon.'

'But Emmeline? Guillaume? What about them? What about Capitaine Fourneaux?'

'We can't help any of them now. Just say goodbye. Come on! Now! You've got to help me get out of here.' He sounded terrified.

I glared at him, hoping the disgust I was feeling towards his cowardice was showing in my face.

'Yes. All right, Mister Joyce. If you need someone to get you out of trouble I suppose it's going to have to be me. Though what I'm doing, staying next to a target like you, I couldn't say. I must be stupid.'

Mister Joyce's face was bleaker and more full of sorrow and fear than I had yet seen it. His Viola huddled by his side, her grey fur flattened by the water that had fallen on us. 'A target, eh? Me - a target? That's rich. That's very rich.'

He shook his head. 'It wasn't me they were aiming for, Miss Moon. Not me. It was _you_.'

'He's right,' said Alfie.

_Oh_. I looked at Mister Joyce. 'Are you saying all this... this... is because of me? Are you saying it's all my fault?'

'Sunny,' said Mister Joyce, and I didn't mind him calling me "Sunny", not that time, 'It's no good talking about _fault_. No, it's not your fault. You didn't press the trigger that fired the weapon that did all this. You didn't tell anyone to do it, nor did you fail to do something that could have stopped it.'

'So...'

'But - you were the target, just the same, and Emmeline and Guillaume have lost a husband and a father because he was too close to you. He liked you very much; did you know that?'

'And he was killed for it.'

'That, and his love for his daemon. He knew how much she would suffer if he took her out of the water.

'Sunny, we can't always predict the consequences of our actions. You're not to blame for what's just happened, but you were the cause of it. Indirectly, anyway.'

_Just as Mister Joyce..._

_...was only the indirect cause of Gerry's death. Yes, Alfie, I know. I'm not stupid. I haven't missed the point._

'All we can do,' Mister Joyce continued, 'is what we believe to be right - we and our daemons between us. That's all - the rest is in the hands of... I mustn't say.'

'I suppose you can't say how you knew we were in danger, either.'

'No, Miss Moon, no. Not yet, anyway.' Now, can you help me up? It works best if you stand on my left side - like so - and put your right arm around my shoulders. Just a moment, I'll take this useless thing off.' Mister Joyce removed his Norfolk jacket. Underneath it there was a kind of harness for his artificial arm. I took hold of it and he ducked his head out from underneath. 'Throw it away. It's no use to me now. You'll have to leave your kitbag behind - it's too heavy.'

'Can I keep some of my things?'

'Just a few. They've got to fit in my knapsack and you've got to carry it.'

'Oh, I see.' I opened up my kitbag and rescued some underclothes, my prayer-book, a handkerchief or two, the photo of Gerry, my notebook and my pencils. Then I pulled out the officer's sword. 'I'll take this,' I said.

'Can you use it?'

'I'll learn. And I'm not leaving it behind. It cost me too much.'

I looped the sword's hilt through my belt. Now I was carrying it the same way I had in London. I slipped my arms through the knapsack's straps, helped Mister Joyce to stand up and put my right arm across his shoulder as he had asked me. Alfie and I turned to face Emmeline and Guillaume.

'Madame... Guillaume... Je suis désolée. Très désolée. Je...' I didn't know enough Frankish to say how terribly sorry I was for the pain and distress I had brought them. I'm not sure I could have expressed myself adequately in English, either.

Emmeline looked up, her face red and blotchy. 'Bonne chance, Sunny,' she said. 'Bonne chance, Peter.' I stared fixedly at the ground.

'Au revoir, Emmeline. Au revoir, Guillaume.' We turned away from them and set off, shuffling clumsily to begin with, along the towpath towards the lock.

- 0 -

The lock-gates had been torn from their mountings by the sky-blast and were strewn in pieces along the side of the canal . I could see a man's body lying trapped under one of them. It was not moving and no sound came from it. Water was streaming through the lock and over the wrecked barge which rested, tilted at a crooked angle, on its bed. Soon, I guessed, the stretch of canal above us would be completely drained and the _Marie-Louse_ would be stranded on the mud like a fishing-boat at low tide. We passed the stricken crew with hardly a word, still sobbing and retching in our misery and shame.


	17. The Alethiometer

_The Alethiometer_

_I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter,  
And make believe it came from you._

Joe Young & Fred E. Alhert

_Dear Gerry,_

_I'm sorry I haven't written to you for so long. It's been ages, I know, and I'm truly ashamed of myself for it. But this is the first chance I've had to write to you since I met Mister Joyce. I wouldn't be doing it now, except that we've holed up in a farmer's barn for the night, but it's not dark yet as it's only eight o'clock. _

_Yes, I suppose I could have written something while we were on the_ Marie-Louise_, but somehow there never seemed to be any time. Time goes funny when you're travelling - have you noticed that, Gerry? Perhaps it was different for you - sailing the ship and all. You were busy working, not like those lazy passengers, sitting around with nothing to do but sleep and dream._

_Mister Joyce is writing something too._

How long has it been since I last wrote anything in my old exercise book? Ten years? Twenty? I don't know. I'm well out of practice, so this is going to be clumsy stuff until I get back into my stride. It'll probably still be a mess even when I'm in the swing of it. I'm not a very good writer, as poor Jim liked to remind me.

Jane doesn't like me writing in this book. 'What are you scribbling in there?' she asks. I say it's personal, and that upsets her. She doesn't like me doing anything she doesn't know every last thing about. Heavens, if she knew I was wandering around Frankland in the company of an attractive sixteen-year-old girl, she'd have a fit. Not only because she was jealous of the girl, but also because I'd be out of her sight. I feel guilty about this. Viola tells me I shouldn't feel like that; I'm doing something that's crucially important. Arthur says so, anyway and of course I believe him. So Jane thinks I'm in London, talking to material suppliers and the Ministry of War and conducting other business matters, when I'm actually on the lam, as it's phrased in those detective stories Elias likes so much.

I've got out of the habit of telling my story in words, even if it's only to myself. It's not only to myself, I know that. I'm not the only person who's interested in reading my story. There are others who are involved with it. Others who, you might say, live for it, even though all the stories they hear belong to dead people. Madame Griselda, my harpy, still waits for me, I know, in a white marble temple on an island in the river near a busy town where a church tower stands next to a grey stone bridge and the boats moor up next to an inn named after an angel.

Some day, Madame, some day. Some day soon, it seems to me. You and I can have a chat, and we'll get on much better than we did last time. We'll meet as old friends. Perhaps your mistress Gracious Wings will look in on us while you fill in all the details of my life on your screen, making sure to check every last detail for absolute correctness.

I wonder how many more life-stories you're responsible for, Madame G. There have been many deaths, this past year or two. Many stories to tell. These feel like the Last Days.

The girl; this Miss Moon, as I'm having to call her at the moment. I'm not having a very easy time of it with her. I can't say I like her very much and if it weren't for Arthur and the instructions he gave me I'd have packed it all in before now and gone home. Of course, now the Enemy has struck down those poor people in that boat I can't possibly give up. What a waste that would be; to throw Jacques Fourneaux's life away for nothing, out of cowardice or simple fed-upness.

What is it about her? Is it that she's so dreadfully spoilt? Is it her snobbery? Her vanity? No; although those are pretty annoying personal traits, they're not exactly fatal. I learned to shrug off the snobbishness of my customers a long time ago. I could hardly stay in business if I didn't. As for the vanity - well. Even in a shapeless uniform and with her hair cropped short she's still a very pretty girl, so I suppose she's got something to be vain about. And she's obviously very bright and, I think, basically good-natured. Brave, too. She wouldn't be here if she didn't have guts. I can even feel sorry for her, losing her brother so early in the War, although she's hardly the only person in the world to have lost a loved one to the Enemy.

_Now we've left the_ Marie-Louise _and what's left of the Fourneaux family behind and it's just Mister Joyce and me, things are getting worse and worse. Oh, how I wish I'd never come to Frankland! Or, for all that, left Highdean. This is just how it was with Mabel and Nancy after they turned nasty. He obviously hates me._

_Why, Gerry, why?_

But... If I'm honest with myself (and if I can't tell the truth to myself and Viola, who can I tell it to?) it's her daemon - her Alpharintus - that's upsetting me. His wrongness may not be immediately apparent to most people, but it's very obvious to Viola and me, especially now I've been told the secret.

'That daemon of hers,' Arthur said when we met in London. 'He's _special_.'

'Special? How?'

And Arthur told me, and it made my flesh crawl to think of it. I couldn't help myself. It wasn't just the fact that Alfie and she were abnormal, it was the _manner_ of their abnormality. It was so wrong. Your daemon settles when you go through puberty. That's the way it is - the way it should be. But Alfie - his ability to assume human form, and the perversions associated with that ability... Like I say, it gave me the creeps.

Viola said it - _Martin James_, she said. _They're like Martin James and his Lillian_.

Yes, Martin James. My old master's brother, who was abducted by the Gobblers as a child, taken to Bolvangar and experimented on. Not in the way most of the children who were taken there were experimented on, by having their daemons separated from them... Oh, Hell...

Oh, what a mess. I had to stop writing there, and I seem to have wet the page rather and smudged it. Surely, after all these twenty or more years, I can forget about Martin James, and his unsettled daemon and the day he cut my Viola away from me... Some days I only think about it once or twice and it hardly troubles me. Some days it occupies all my thoughts and I have to go away for a while - into the workshop, or along the banks of the Isis in Port Meadow - and talk to Viola about it. Or speak to Lyra, even though she's been dead for twenty five years now. Jane leaves me alone when this mood comes on me. She knows there are some things that are so deeply personal that I can't share them with anyone, not even my wife and children.

Enough maundering. I'm supposed to be telling _my_ story here, not complaining about our precious Miss Moon, or Lady Muck, or whatever it is she expects to be called today. Good grief! She's only a child. I shouldn't be letting her get to me like this.

We're camping in a barn. It's only a mile or two from the canal, but that's as far as we've been able to get this afternoon. Damn this crippled leg! Back home in Oxford I've found ways and means of managing with it. I can walk on it pretty well; on level pavements, at least. Jane or one of the servants can help me if I get into trouble, and that's not happened for years. But this is different. The ground goes up and down and the surface is rough. I'm having to lean on Miss Moon and, while I'm sure we make a most attractive couple, pretending we're running in a three-legged race is not the way to make the kind of progress we need to make if we're to get to Geneva in time, always assuming we're not too late already. I'll check on that, first thing.

_He weighs a ton, Gerry! My shoulders ache quite horribly and we only managed to stagger a mile or so. Tomorrow, we're going to have to find a different way of getting along. Oh - I mean that in two ways, don't I? Clever me, I don't think._

Yes, I think we're going to have to get a lift from somebody. Our present speed is far too low. It was easy enough getting here - the Gyptian underground got me to the crossroads more straightforwardly and probably faster than the regular means of transport. But we can't use them again, not after what happened this afternoon. I told Miss Moon that she was the target of the attack - and that's true - but I think it's more than likely I'm in the firing line too. Before we get much further I think I'm going to have to tell the girl a little more about myself and what I know to get her to agree to what we're trying to do. I'm so dependent on her. I hate that.

_I found it hard to sleep last night. Images kept flashing through my mind and however hard I tried to make them go away, they wouldn't. The horrors of the afternoon, of course. Not so much the charred corpse of Capitaine Fourneaux falling into the canal, as the sight of his Jeanne carelessly tossed through the air by the force of the blast. I kept seeing her; wreathed in smoke, twisted in pain, dying in agony. Did you see things like that, Gerry, before you died? Or was it quick and painless?_

_After a sparse supper of bread and cheese we lay on opposite sides of the barn and tried to sleep. I drifted off quite quickly at first, but then woke with those abominable visions tormenting me again. Not just of Jeanne's death, but other memories; from the ambulance depot and the field hospital. Horrible, horrible. Then I slept again for a while. Once I woke, to find Mister Joyce standing looking down at me, with a strange, unreadable expression on his face. He said something I couldn't quite make out. I wondered what he was up to. Surely he wasn't going to try to assault me? He'd be no match for me in a fight, even though he weighs more than I do. He's no taller than me and I don't suppose his reach - even with his good arm - is any better than mine. I quickly closed my eyes again, hoping he hadn't noticed I was awake, and ready to ask Alfie to Change and help defend me. I braced myself to get up and run if needs be, but it turned out I didn't have to._

Miss Moon slept in a pile of hay near the barn door. Viola and I took the other side of the floor. Around one in the morning I found I needed a pee, so I made my way out of the barn as quietly as I could, trying not to disturb her. When I returned, it was to find that the clouds had uncovered the moon and that a beam of light from an opening in the gable end of the barn wall was illuminating my reluctant companion. I stopped to look at her.

It must have been a quirk of the light, because for a moment it seemed that her head was surrounded, not by the bristly one-inch growth of her own dark hair, but by honey-coloured locks. She lay breathing softly on the hay, her face gold-clasped and beautiful. I stopped breathing myself for a moment, my heart leaping with an intoxicating hope. Was that really a mink-daemon in her arms? Could it be that she was not Miss Moon after all, but someone else?

'Lyra?' I said softly, and the girl moved in her sleep. As she shifted her position the light changed and the illusion shivered and broke into pieces. She was only Sonya Moon after all. She disgusted me; and I turned away from her, found my place by the barn wall, lay down, snuggled Viola into my right arm and tried to get some sleep.

_That's all for now. I'll write again when I can._

_Little Sis_

- 0 -

'Miss Moon?' said Mister Joyce the next morning, waking me.

'Yes?' I said, shaking the straw out of my clothes. At least it wasn't caught in my hair.

'There are a couple of things we need to do.' He looked worried. What had upset him now?

'You mean, have breakfast and get out of here.'

'Besides that. For a start I've got to find a place where I can do some work.'

'Work? What do you mean?'

Mister Joyce paused. He seemed to be consulting with his Viola so, of course, I looked away.

'There's an... instrument I've got. It's damaged, and I've got to try to repair it.'

'Damaged? How? Did you drop it? What's it for?'

'It was the strike yesterday. I ought to have checked it last night. That lightning-bolt, it was anbaric...'

'Yes, I know.'

'Do you? Good, they've taught you some useful things at that posh school of yours, then.'

'Besides learning how to speak Frankish, you mean?' Holy Spirit, but he was an irritating man!

'Yes. Anyway, look, it was damaged by the strike, I need to try to mend it and I can't do that here. I need light and a workbench of some kind.'

'Can't it wait?'

'No, it can't.'

'What is it? Can you show me?'

'Yes, I suppose so.' Reluctantly, as if he hated what he was doing, Mister Joyce took a green velvet bag from his pocket. Holding it in his palm he loosened the bag's drawstrings and took out a gold or brass instrument the size of a large pocket-watch. It looked like a watch too, except that it had four hands and, instead of the hours, there were symbols engraved around the edge of the dial. It was, I have to say, a very nice thing to look at. The morning light glinted on its glass.

'Coo! Did you make that yourself, Mister Joyce? Is it a watch? Or some kind of compass?'

Again, he seemed unwilling to speak. 'No, I didn't make it. It was left to me by Professor Lyra Belacqua of the University of Oxford, in her will.'

'But what is it? Won't you tell me?'

'It's called an alethiometer.'

'An aleethy-what?'

'An _alethiometer_. It tells the truth, if you are able to operate it and interpret what it says. It's an oracle.'

'Oh. I see.' I didn't. Mister Joyce wasn't making any kind of sense. 'So what's wrong with it?'

'It's stuck. None of the pointers will move. Do you see?' He held it towards me. 'To use it you set three of the hands with these knurled knobs.' I saw them, spaced around the outside of the instrument. 'Then you ask a question and the pointer moves and gives you the answer.'

'Just like that?'

'If it works for you and you know how to read it properly, yes.'

'Can you ask it anything you like?'

'Within reason, yes. It can't predict the future, for example. Also, you have to ask sensible questions, otherwise the answer is harder to work out than the question, if you see what I mean.'

'So...' I was thinking. 'It really works?'

'When it's in good order, yes.'

'But that's incredible!' I was becoming excited. 'You could do _anything_ if you had one of these. You'd know everything there was to know! You could... be King, if you wanted! Oh Mister Joyce, you've got to mend it!'

_Careful_, said Alfie.

'Wait a minute.' I had another thought. 'If this... alethiometer is as good as you make it out to be, why aren't you rich? Or why aren't you helping the Government? You could find out what the Enemy are doing, and help defeat them. What aren't you doing that, Mister Joyce?'

'It's not meant for doing things like that. It wasn't given to me so I could use it for my own profit. I make my living the honest way, by working. Not by cheating.'

'Oh! You've got _principles_, have you, Mister Joyce?' I put both my hands on my hips. The officer's sword brushed against my left thigh and, remembering it, I drew it and held it out. 'I should take it from you and give it to the King. Or the Church.'

'The Church has one already.' Mister Joyce never blinked, although he swayed a little on his bad leg.

'Oh.'

'Now put that silly thing away. Let's find a house where we can buy some breakfast and I can borrow the kitchen table. Come on.'

- 0 -

There was a sizeable village only another half-mile along the road from the farm where we had slept; with shops and an _auberge_, the _Mouton Dor_. The landlady there was happy to serve us with kaffee and fresh bread and cheese. I asked her if she had a _salle privée_ we could use and, without showing any sign that she was surprised by my request, she showed us to a small back room with two benches and a table. We would have called it the Snug Bar in an English inn.

Mister Joyce waited until the door had closed behind us, and then he took out the alethiometer again. His tools were in the knapsack, so I got them out and handed them over to him. 'Do you mind if I watch?' I said.

'No, I suppose not,' was the answer.

Mister Joyce's tool-roll was packed with tiny delicate screwdrivers, tweezers, keys and other instruments I couldn't identify. Just like before when he'd mended the _Marie-Louise_'s clock, Viola helped him, by holding the alethiometer as he undid its back-plate, or passing tools to him. She was truly his missing hand, and I marvelled to see them work together so neatly.

'I know a blind shopkeeper in Oxford, a friend of mine,' Mister Joyce said, putting the alethiometer carefully down on a piece of baize cloth. 'He's a pawnbroker, and his daemon does his seeing for him. He looks through her eyes, he says.'

'Gosh!'

'There'll be a lot more like him and me before this War is over.'

'Yes, I suppose so.'

Mister Joyce removed the knurled wheels and carefully extracted the works of the instrument from its case. 'Now, then,' he said, half to himself, half to Viola. 'What's up here?' He screwed a magnifying glass into his right eye and looked closely at the inwards. The he took out one of his tools - a little probe, like a dentist uses - and prodded at it. He shook his head.

_This isn't going well_, said Alfie.

Mister Joyce put the works back on the table and took out another of his tiny tools. He tried to undo one of the screws that held on the brass plate at one side of the instrument. It wouldn't turn. He took out another screwdriver - a bigger one - and tried again. Still no luck. I couldn't see his face, but by the stiff set of his shoulders I could see that something was badly wrong.

'Can I help?' I asked.

_That was a silly thing to say_, said Alfie.

'Is it stuck?'

_Sunny, shut up!_

Mister Joyce looked up. 'It's not just stuck. It's _fused_. Welded. Do you see?' He held it up to me. 'Look, where the iron arbors engage in the brass platework.'

I looked. There were shiny splodges of silvery metal where he pointed. 'It shouldn't be like that, then, all mushroomy?'

'No.' Mister Joyce shook his head.

'But can you mend it?'

'If I were in my workshop in Oxford, and if I had access to a gas-cutter and if I had plenty of time, yes, I could mend it. Here - no chance.' He put his head in his hands, both of them. Even then, I wondered how he did it - how he made the wooden elbow of his artificial left arm hinge like that.

'Why's it done that? My sword's all right. Look!' I drew it and put it down on the table next to the damaged instrument. Mister Joyce looked closely at it.

'You were lucky. Look where the blade joins the hilt, by the guard.' I looked. There was the same shiny, splodgy appearance to the metal where the steel of the blade met the brass of the guard.

'That strike was anbaric, as I said, and we were very close to it. If it hadn't been for the water of the canal drawing the charge away from us we'd have been killed instantly, like poor Jacques and Jeanne. We were lucky they were aiming for the _Marie-Louise_, not us. Even so, there was a big anbaric potential difference in the air, and it made a current flow in any nearby conductor, like the metal of your sword-blade. Where two dissimilar metals were joined together or came into contact, as in Lyra's alethiometer or your sword-hilt, great heat was generated - enough to melt the metal pieces and weld them. That sword is a crude thing, and it came to no great harm. This alethiometer is very delicate, and it's been seriously damaged. It may never work again.' His face was blank. I suddenly realised that he was _grieving_.

'Never mind,' I said, meaning only to console him. 'You'll mend it, I know you will. It's only a _thing_, you know.'

He looked away from me. 'It was _hers_. Lyra's.' His voice was very low. 'I've let her down. I've betrayed her. Again...' He wept then, and I picked Alfie up and carried him over to the window where I stood and looked out on the cobbled yard at the back of the inn. I could not comfort Mister Joyce. There were great shoals of meaning shifting beneath us - concerning things about which I knew nothing and understood less.

- 0 -

'The other thing we need,' said Mister Joyce as we stood in the square outside the _auberge_, our bill paid and our knapsack re-packed, 'is a better means of transport than Shanks' Pony.'

'So we're still going somewhere, are we?'

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'I can't tell you yet.'

'Do you know?'

'Yes.'

'Even without the alethiometer to tell you?'

'Yes.'

'North, south, east or west?'

'East.'

I was getting annoyed with this silly guessing game. 'So we're going up to the Front, then.' Did he think I was stupid?

'Yes. All right, we're going to the Front.'

'Then you ought to be wearing a soldier's uniform. The way it is now, you look like a deserter.'

'I'm in a reserved occupation.'

'Makes no difference here, Mister Joyce.'

'All right. I'll think of something.'

'So we're going up to the Front and we need transport. Why don't we borrow that car?' I pointed to a little Citroën _souris_ that was standing in the road outside the butcher's shop.

'I don't think we should try to make off with someone's car in the middle of a village where everyone can see us, should we?'

'All right, what do you suggest?'

'I suggest we try to find someone who would be willing to lend - or hire - us their car.'

'You mean, like him?' I pointed to a sign above a pair of double doors in the building next to the inn:

**_M. Herande, Mécanicien_**

Voitures d'occasion  
Voitures à louer  
Toutes Marques

'A man who sells and hires out cars. That should do us. How much money have you got? I've about two thousand francs on me.'

'What's that in real money?'

'Fifty, sixty quid. Not much.'

'What?'

'Only fifty pounds or so. Why, what's wrong now?' Mister Joyce was looking furious.

'That's a workman's wages for ten weeks, and you're just casually walking around with it jangling in your pocket! Whole families have to live on far less than that and you don't seem to care. "Not much", eh? Bloody rich kids!' He jammed his right hand in his pocket.

'Yes!' Suddenly my blood was simmering. 'Yes, I'm rich. My family is very well-off indeed. Sorry if that makes us vulgar, Mister Joyce, sorry if that makes us snobs, but the Moon family has been working hard for absolute bloody centuries, building up our farms and our estates. We started from _nothing_, Mister Joyce. We work hard, and we pay fair wages to our people, and we've made everyone around us prosperous. We've shared out our money. We don't ask for favours or handouts from anybody. We'll let ourselves be cheated rather than drive an unfair bargain or take advantage of somebody's misfortune, because that's the kind of people we are. It's made us extremely bloody rich, Mister Joyce, being decent to people, and I'll thank you not to get all effing high-minded and _principled_ about it. All right?'

Mister Joyce looked, to give him credit, a little sheepish. 'I'm sorry, Miss Moon. I didn't mean to...'

'No, I don't suppose you did. You can't help it, can you? You can't help hating me, even though I've done nothing to hurt you. I don't know why I don't just dump you here and go home to Mornington. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. I've disobeyed a direct order to be here, now, with you. Look, I'm sorry about your alethiometer being broken, but I'm not going to let that stop us. If we need to get a car, then we'll get a car, and the money my father made from grinding the faces of the poor will have to pay for it. Got it? _Okay_?'

'Bravo!' said Alfie and kissed my cheek. Viola's ears and tail twitched in response.

'And don't tell me I'm beautiful when I'm angry, either, unless you want to bloody well _hop_ back to Oxford.'

Mister Joyce looked down at the pavement. 'I've said I'm sorry.'

- 0 -

Monsieur Herande was _très désol_, but the only car he had to spare was a steam-powered Dassault that must have been at least forty years old. 'La guerre,' he said, and shrugged his shoulders. He agreed to hire it to us for two weeks for twelve hundred francs which was outrageous, even for wartime. I managed to screw a supply of naphtha - a full tank and a spare carboy - out of him by threatening to report him to the _Préfecture_ for offering for hire a car with two bald tyres. He changed the tyres for us and dropped the hire charge to a square thousand francs at which point, honour satisfied, we shook hands on the deal.

While I negotiated, Mister Joyce checked the condition of the car's engine and running gear. 'It's a bit stiff, but it'll go,' he said. 'Have you ever driven a steam car before?'

'No,' I replied.

'Well, they tell me it's just like driving a gas-engine powered one, except that you have to keep a weather eye on the steam pressure gauge and be sure to fill the boiler regularly with water.'

His face was grim - even grimmer than usual. 'We don't want the boiler exploding, do we?'

'No,' I said. 'We don't.' Why was he so worried about that?

Half-an-hour later, steam was hissing from the safety valve in a manner that seemed to mollify Mister Joyce's fears. I explained to Monsieur Herande that I had only driven gaz-powered vehicles before. I showed him my driver's badge and signed the hire papers in the name of Samuel Clarence Moon. That was Mister Joyce's idea.

'I think you'd better become a soldier boy, don't you? If they're looking for you, they'll be looking for a girl, not a young man. Pull your cap well down over your head and see if you can't do something about...' He pointed to my chest and I giggled.

'Hang your shirt and tunic outside your trousers; that'll disguise your waist. Now, wear that belt loose at an angle across your hips. That's it, now the sword doesn't stick out. Can you lower the pitch of your voice a bit?'

'Like this?' I growled in my best Noel-the-toy-lion voice.

'That'll do. It sounds like it's breaking. Your uniform is the wrong colour for an infantryman - it should be khaki, not grey - but that won't matter. You can be a driver in the Logistics Corps if you're challenged. All right, Driver Sam Moon?'

'Yes, Mister Joyce.' I smiled. The idea of becoming a boy had tickled me. 'But what about you? Have you thought of something?'

'Yes, I have. I'll be an SME - a Subject Matter Expert. The Army uses civilians like me as expert advisors on technical matters. I've got some papers in my knapsack that will support that story.'

'All right, Mister Joyce. You are still called Joyce, aren't you?'

'I'd better not be,' he said. 'If what I've been told is true, the name of Joyce will be known in Geneva. Call me... Mister Parry. John Parry.'

'But your papers...'

'We'll deal with that if we need to. Your uniform will get us past most of the checkpoints we may encounter. But Parry will do very well as a travelling name. Yes, indeed it will.'

And once again I found his expression completely unreadable.


	18. On the Road

_On the Road_

_But I ain't going down  
That long old lonesome road  
All by myself.  
I can't carry you, baby,  
Gonna carry somebody else._

Floyd Jones & Alan Wilson

We found another _auberge_ in another village that evening; the _Deux Luppars_ in Honoréville.

'The "Duke's Whats"? Lepers?' said Mister Joyce, sounding slightly disgusted. I had a quick consultation with the innkeeper.

'It's _Leopards_,' I said. '_Luppars_ is Middle Frankish for Leopards, not Lepers.'

'Oh I see. That's all right then.'

_That's all right then_, mimicked Alfie.

'Come on,' I said. 'Let's go in. I'm knackered.'

- 0 -

The innkeeper wanted us to share a room, but the girl's got so much money we can afford to have a little privacy. That's probably a good thing, under the circumstances.

I've taken the alethiometer out again and had another look at it. It's tempting - desperately so - to try to force the welded-up components apart, but I mustn't. The chances are I would do irreparable damage and, for Lyra's sake as well as mine, I can't risk that. This is a terrible, a grievous blow. I'd come to rely on it. If it hadn't been for the information it gave me yesterday we'd all have been on the _Marie-Louise_ when the strike hit.

Curse them! Now the Church has a working alethiometer and we haven't. That's going to make our task even harder and it means that I'm going to have to get some help from Arthur somehow, if I'm to get the girl to Geneva in one piece.

I'll have to let her in on things soon. A little more, anyway. It's tricky - if she knows too much she may blab - accidentally or under questioning. If she knows too little, she'll make mistakes, not be careful enough, give the game away by accident. This is difficult for me. I'm sure I was never cut out to be an undercover agent.

I wrote yesterday that these feel like the Last Days. If anything, that feeling has intensified over the last twenty-four hours. I need a dose.

And why, oh why, did it have to be a _steam_ car she hired? Of all the foul things that could have happened! I'm going to have to tell her about that too - how the Ridgeworth's boiler exploded in the back garden of the house in the Botley Road where Martin James and Elias Cholmondley were holding Jim and Carrie and me hostage, and how it set off the leaky gas supply in the kitchen and brought the whole place down around our ears, and took my left arm and leg with it.

It was the price I had to pay, I know, to be reunited with my Viola after that lunatic James intercised her from me. It was a price I willingly accepted. It was the only way to save my life and - as it turned out - Carrie Mason's, but... sometimes you agree to something, believing you know what the implications of that agreement are. You think you understand them.You can even write them down in a list if you like. But you can't feel them, you can't _experience_ them, until you've committed yourself and by then it's too late to change your mind.

I have suffered twenty years of almost continual pain. That sounds stupid. Just writing that down makes me feel stupid and self-pitying. Of course I hurt. My missing arm hurts. My missing foot hurts. Nothing can stop that. Yes; I can drink tincture of poppy for it. Not long after I left hospital I tried a little - a few grams from the apothecary - but it didn't take away the pain. Why should it? How could a little common poppy dissolved in alcohol remove the pain from an arm that wasn't there? But I took some more, and yet more, and I found that if I took a big enough dose the pain went away - but so did I. I stopped being _me_. So then I scaled down the dose again and I found that if I got it just right, and kept taking it regularly and at precise intervals I could keep the pain from driving me mad. But there's a cost. I've become a clockwork man. I'm ruled by the clock Me - a skilled instrument maker, a Master of the Guild of Temporalists - counting the everlasting hours until my next lovely forget-dose. Living for it, like a common Whitechapel poppy-head. Not being able to live without it.

This shames me. Writing this down shames me. I've not done this before. Written about my addiction, I mean. I don't think Miss Moon knows my secret and she's definitely not seen the tincture-bottle in my pocket - I've been very careful about that. That's down to years of careful habit.With any luck she thought I was asleep when I was actually dosed up.

It's under control. After all these years, it's under control. I have Jane to thank for that. She's determined and strong where I am weak. The business has prospered despite my ever-present need. I don't want my doses half so much when I'm working. Busy makes the pain go away nearly as well as poppy does. Busy keeps my mind occupied. Busy - and the love of Viola, my sweet Viola.

Please, please, don't ever make me have to lose her again.

- 0 -

Mister Joyce was looking very tired when he said goodnight after supper. I'd finally found a make of Frankish cigarette I could smoke without feeling as if I wanted to throw up. Perhaps that's why he went upstairs so quickly - to get away from the smoke. It didn't bother me all that much. I finished off his half-eaten plate of _tarte aux myrtilles_ for him. No point in letting it go to waste, especially when it was so scrummy. Even a spoilt, rich girl like me could see that. Except I wasn't a girl any more, of course, but a boy soldier. That idea was still giving me a funny, tingly feeling inside.

_You are a floozy_, said Alfie, _with only one thing on your mind_.

_Just concentrate on being a convincing girl-daemon_, I replied, taking another _Tinta Rosa_ cigarette from my pocket and lighting it. I wondered if I should write to Gerry.

_Leave it for today_, said Alfie. _You're tireder than you realise_.

_All right_. I took another puff. It was getting late and the dining room of the _Luppars_ was nearly empty. I called to the waiter to bring me another glass of cognac and a cup of the concentrated kaffee they called _ristrait_. One would counteract the other, I thought.

- 0 -

This is no more than an adventure for her. A jolly jape, she'd call it. Viola says I'm being unfair to her. Just because she's pretty it doesn't follow she's empty-headed and her trivial manner may be no more than a front to hide her fear - an act, in other words. Even so, she's not afraid to say what's on her mind. She put me properly in my place back at the garage where we got that bloody car. She meant what she said, too, every word of it. That wasn't an act. So she's proud of her family background, and if that sometimes comes over as haughtiness or snobbishness I shouldn't let it get to me. After all; who's the adult and who's the child around here?

All the same, I wish she wouldn't smoke. The ash is getting on my clothes and spoiling Viola's fur. Ah well. Time for my bedtime draught.

- 0 -

Alfie and I slept well. We had a nice room at the back of the _auberge_ facing east and the sun got us out of bed in good time. I coughed a little as I washed and dressed and my head wasn't feeling quite right from too much to drink the night before, but breakfast would cure that. I felt a bit squashed around the chest - the inevitable result of trying to appear to be a boy - and I hoped I wasn't going to end up being forced permanently out of shape. Imagine! Anyway I draped the uniform over myself in the baggiest way I could manage. As a final touch and at his suggestion, Alfie scratched me on the chin with his right front claw. Ouch! But now I had a credible shaving-cut.

'Nice idea, Alfie,' I said. 'I bet you enjoyed doing that.'

_I felt it just as much as you did._ The poor little chap sounded quite upset, so I gave him a big kiss and a proper cuddle. That made both of us feel better.

When we got down to the dining room it was to find that we were the first there. I ordered kaffee and croissants and yoghurt and apricot conserve and tucked in. Nothing like a Frankish breakfast to counteract any tendency to pudginess - not that I had one, naturally.

When Mister Joyce finally appeared at the foot of the stairs, I waved to him. 'Over here, Mister Parry!'

He didn't blink. 'Hello, Sam. Slip with the razor?' I smiled and got the waiter to bring him toast, cheese, ham and _thé au lait_. I hoped that would cheer him up a bit because, frankly, he looked dreadful, with a sallow face and bleary eyes.

- 0 -

The beggar-it-all of the Dassault wasn't the time it took to get steam up or the way the throttle worked so differently from a gazole-powered vehicle. (It was much less direct, you know.) No - it was the bloody thing's thirst for water that gave us the most trouble. I'd thought I'd been clever, screwing an extra supply of naphtha out of Monsieur Herande the day before, but he must have been smiling behind his hand all the time. What we really needed was a spare water tank if we weren't to spend half our time stopping at streams or begging the use of the well at wayside cottages. Every village had a horse-trough, of course, but they weren't always full.

So as soon as we saw some cows by the side of the road we looked out for the farm they belonged to, and when we found it I bought three metal churns from the farmer - as many as would fit on the back seat of the Dassault - and filled them up with water from his well. Now we could go for more than half an hour without having to watch the gauge so closely. Mister Joyce relaxed a little. The car was making him nervous, I could tell, so I drove as gently as I could. I'm not sure how much he appreciated the trouble I was going to. Just as on the _Marie-Louise_ he seemed to be in a dream for much of the time. Around midday we stopped for lunch in a nice shady spot by a bridge over a bright, fast-running stream The country was becoming steeper and hillier, and the Dassault was using more naphtha and water than I'd expected. Still, we'd see the day out. Mister Joyce opened his book and started writing in it again. I wished he'd talk to me more and spend less time with his diary, or whatever it was.

- 0 -

It's a relief not to be bumping along these infernal frog-eating roads for a while. This jagging motion is doing my arm and leg no good at all. We passed a sign not long ago - 50 miles to Geneva. By train, that would take less than an hour. In this horrible dangerous rattletrap of a car it's going to take much longer. And anyway, we'll reach the fighting soon and that will slow us down.

If only... Damn it, I must stop thinking like this. If only Lyra's alethiometer were still working I could plot us a course that would keep us clear of roadblocks and danger. Not even the poppy could prevent me from doing that. Actually, while I'm writing down the sordid details of my addiction I may as well note that the poppy has never prevented me from reading the alethiometer in my own uneducated way. In fact I've often found that it helps. I feel more in touch with what it's telling me, as if to be more detached from this world were to be closer to the world of the angels.

Miss Moon is really putting it away. How does she do it? She just ate a whole _baguette_ and a quarter-pound of Brie and now she's tucking into her second apple. Where does she put it all? She's skinny as a lath. If I were to eat that much every day I'd balloon out until I looked like a football.

How I wish I were young again.

- 0 -

'Mister Parry?'

'Yes, Sam?'

'I've got a couple of questions, if you don't mind.'

'Go on.'

'It's about the alethiometer. You said that it didn't predict the future.'

'That's right.'

'So how did you know we were about to be hit by that lightning, if it couldn't tell you what was going to happen? Did you ask it if we were in danger?'

Mister Joyce looked up from his book. 'We're always in danger. The alethiometer would have answered _yes_. No, instead I asked where our danger came from and it told me to watch the skies.'

'That was while you were down in the _Marie-Louise_'s cabin.'

'Yes.'

'But how did it tell you the danger was so close? Did it shout at you?'

'In a manner of speaking, yes. It used lots of truth symbols in its answer. Is that all you want to know?'

'No, there's something else. Are we going to be struck by lightning again? We're next to water, like we were two days ago. Are we in more danger? Do our... enemies know where we are?'

Mister Joyce shook his head. 'There's no way of knowing for sure. But I think not, else they'd have tried again by now. I think - I hope - there's somebody helping us.'

'Somebody? How? Who?'

'I can't say.'

'Oh.'

It was time to get moving again. I topped up the car's water tank and refilled the three churns from the stream. They were very heavy once they were full and it took all my strength to pull them out of the water, roll them up the bank and along the verge and lift them into the car. Mister Joyce tried to help, but he couldn't do much, even with his good right arm. He looked mortified - how useless he must have felt, him being a man and all and me just a slip of a girl. I was tempted to ask him to turn his back or go into the nearby copse while Alfie - Changed Alfie - helped me, but I didn't know if I could trust him. Besides, the churns were made of steel, and both Alfie and I were afraid of the burning touch of iron on his skin.

We had kept off the subject. It wasn't something we wanted to think about, either of us. It must have been pure chance that Alfie, in his Changed form, hadn't touched iron and been scorched by it long before we made that ill-starred visit to the Chelsea Barracks. It seemed so unlikely, though. Perhaps there was more to it than the simple fact of the chain that had hurt him so badly being made of iron. Perhaps intent came into it. The orderly had _intended_ to hurt us and he had certainly succeeded in that.

_Let's not chance it_, said Alfie, and we cringed with remembered pain.

- 0 -

That night we had to share a room. Our meanderings along the country roads of north-east Frankland had finally brought us back to familiar territory and we had stopped for the night in the village of Saint-Claude, where everything had started to go so badly wrong a week or so before. This was potentially quite risky. I might be identified even though I had previously only been there for a night and a morning while the Brigade got ready to move up to the Front.

We had already been waved through two checkpoints along our route and I knew, from my earlier experiences, that there would probably be quite a few more between Saint-Claude and Geneva. Yes, Geneva. Mister Joyce hadn't told me where we were going - he'd been as tight-lipped as ever all day - but I'm not stupid, despite appearances. Where else could we possibly be going, if he didn't want to tell me about it, but the most dangerous of all possible destinations?

Anyway, we couldn't stay at Madame Fluegel's house again in case she recognised me, so we had to ask around and eventually we found a dusty attic room above a wheelwright's shop. 'Only one bed, but you lads won't mind sharing, will you?' said the shop manager, taking an exorbitant hundred francs from me for the night's rent.

_This'll be a novel experience_, said Alfie.

_Shut up, daemon_.

We got supper - and a very poor supper it was, consisting of grey lentil soup, gritty bread and a repulsive gelatine mould pudding that reminded me of school dinners - at a nearby tavern. It looked as if the war economy was in full swing in Saint-Claude. A couple of glasses of nasty pale thin beer washed it down.

'Beggar this. Double-beggar this,' I said, thumping the beer-mug down on the table and remembering to keep my voice sounding gruff. I pushed my way to the bar and bought a quarter-bottle of cognac, being sure to check that the seal hadn't been messed about with. If they could water the beer, they'd more than likely dilute the brandy as well. 'Come on, John,' I slapped my companion's good shoulder with my right hand. 'Let's go to bed.'

Mister Joyce looked startled, but he was as tired as me after a long day spent bouncing over unmade roads in an open-topped car under a hot sun, so he nodded his head and followed me up the stairs.

- 0 -

I can't sleep. I'm deadly tired, but I can't sleep. Oh Hell.

That was a daft thing to write. There's no such place as Hell, unless I'm living there already. The pain is especially bad tonight.

The girl is fast asleep, lucky cow, and snoring gently. Her Alfie is wrapped in her arms. I hope he doesn't try to do... that obscene thing.

- 0 -

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. It was all so silly. First Mister Joyce offered to sleep on the floor and let me have the bed. Then I said that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard - he was much older than me and should sleep in the bed himself as he needed it much more than me. I would roll myself up in a blanket and sleep on the floor, like I did when I went camping. He got all middle-aged about that and said he couldn't possibly sleep in a bed and let a lady sleep on the floor, especially when she was the one who had paid for the room. I said I was no lady, and anyway my name was Sam, wasn't it? That got his back up and for a time it looked as if we were _both_ going to sleep on the floor, with the bed between us. I said I wasn't going to spend a hundred francs to sleep on the floor and why didn't we just get into the bed and stop mucking about? He said he was a married man who took his vows seriously, and how could he ever explain it to his wife? My reply was that he didn't have to tell her. She thought he was in London, didn't she? Wasn't somebody sending postcards from London to Oxford for him, the way Cecilia had sent forged messages from Argyll to my Aunt Sybil when I ran away from school? He mumbled and muttered and said all right, but we'd have to lay the bolster down the middle of the bed to divide it into two and "prevent any impropriety from occurring" as the stuffed idiot put it. So we tried that and it soon became obvious there wasn't enough room for him, me and the bolster, so I yanked it out and put it back at the head of the bed where it belonged. All this time the bed-frame groaned and squeaked so much they must have heard it in London. I pointed this out to Mister Joyce - that it sounded like he was giving his young driver a jolly rogering - and he looked so angry and upset that I said I was sorry and offered him a swig of brandy from my quarter-bottle in compensation.

So then he offered to sleep upside down, with his head at the bottom of the bed. There was no way on earth that I was going to put up with having his smelly old feet - foot - stuck underneath my nose all night. Not at all. So in the end we lay very primly side by side on our backs with our arms crossed over our chests the way they taught us at school, so we wouldn't succumb to the unconscious temptation to play with ourselves while we slept.

- 0 -

We're sleeping - or trying to sleep - in our day-clothes, so neither of us has had to undress in front of the other, or turn his or her back for discretion's sake while the other disrobed. Even so, now that we are lying so close to one another that we can't help coming into contact from time to time, I cannot help hearing what my imagination is whispering to me. My vision of her in the barn two nights ago has come back to me with full force and I can't bear it. I can't. She's not Lyra. I know that. She's nothing like Lyra - not the Lyra I knew; wise, kind and modest. She's thoughtless and vain, full of boasting and shamelessness, casually foul-mouthed, and I know she was laughing at me while we were sorting out the sleeping arrangements, as well she might. What an idea! Me - Peter Joyce the ugly old cripple - and she, the lovely daughter of a rich and powerful family, sleeping together? Ridiculous.

But as she lies and breathes next to me - lithe, warm and effortlessly beautiful - I cannot push away the thoughts that crowd my mind. Thoughts of the day when Lyra and I sailed down the Isis on a magical boat, and stopped by the side of the river, and told one another of our love, and consummated it; there in a open room with green walls, roofed by the sky and warmed by the golden air of a summer's afternoon.

Sunny is not Lyra. She never was, and she never will be. But oh - if only she were. If only...


	19. The Copse

_The Copse_

_I'm going underground, (going underground),  
Well the brass bands play and feet start to pound.  
Going underground, (going underground),  
Well let the boys all sing and the boys all shout for tomorrow._

Paul Weller

'Right, Mister Parry, how are we supposed to get into Geneva? Last time I heard there was a war going on there and they'd shut and barred all the doors.'

'Shush!' Mister Joyce put a finger to his lips. 'Keep your voice down, can't you?'

_That wasn't very nice_, said Alfie. _That wasn't fair at all_.

I looked around. It was the following morning, we were standing outside the wheelwright's shop and there was nobody nearby. 'Look,' I said. 'We've got the whole street to ourselves. Nobody heard anything.'

'That's hardly the point, you stupid girl. What makes you think we're going to Geneva?'

'I'm not a girl, I'm a bloke. I'm Driver Sam Moon. Now who's speaking out of turn?'

_Bloody hell, Sunny! Show him some respect, can't you?_

Mister Joyce thumped his wooden palm with his right hand. 'I'll swing for her! I will!'

I paid him very little attention. I could hear the sound of gunfire in the east.

- 0 -

After a breakfast that was the equal of the previous night's supper we set off, following the road Alfie and I had taken with Mabel and Nancy only a week before. The talk we'd overheard in the tavern the previous night had suggested that the Front was still advancing, but slowly. Certainly we were sharing the road with a great deal of military traffic. There were lorries loaded with everything from ammunition to livestock, troop-carriers with their cargoes of ghost-eyed, frightened men, officers in staff-cars, ambulances, tanks, mobile guns, balloon-launchers, armoured cars, fuel-tankers and rocket batteries as well as lines of marching infantrymen, sweating and cursing as they were forced off the side of the road and into the endless mud by the mechanised traffic. Our little steam-powered car with its chattering motor felt fragile and incongruous in the middle of this flood of heavy-duty khaki.

From time to time we came to a crossroads where a red-capped policeman waved us across or raised his hand to stop us and let the other traffic pass. Every time this happened I thought we were going to be ordered to get down and show our papers, and I had my story ready. But there were so many of us making our way to the Front, and another tide, nearly as full, of relieved soldiers flowing towards us, that we weren't hindered in our progress. We were, after all, only two among thousands.

It was like being in a train. We couldn't go any faster than the vehicle in front of us, and we didn't dare slow down for fear of being run into by the lorry behind. Mister Joyce had found a way of keeping the water-tank replenished from the churns in the car's back seat. He'd got hold of a piece of tubing - from the tavern cellars, I suspected - and had made a kind of siphon arrangement that meant he didn't have to lift the churns up or tip them to get the water out. It was clever, and it meant we didn't have to keep stopping the way we had the two days before.

Neither of us spoke much, apart from necessary things to do with driving the car. Me, because I was annoyed with Mister Joyce and myself about our little spat, and also because I had to remember to do the big-man deep-voice act. Mister Joyce because - I don't know. I think he would have liked to have been able to write in his book but the Dassault was bouncing and rolling too much on the deeply-rutted road for him to make anything other than illegible scribbles.

After three hours of this bone-jarring progress we reached the ruined church where the convoy had stopped before, and where Mabel and Nancy had betrayed me to the rest of the Advance Brigade. It was time for a rest. Both Mister Joyce and I were tired of feeling sick and disoriented by the car's motion so, without needing to ask, I pulled off the road and parked by the wall.

'Lunch break,' I said.

Mister Joyce looked as if he was not sure that eating was exactly what he felt like doing at that time. Perhaps he would come around to the idea after a few minutes. I wandered into the roofless shell of the church. The stained glass had been shattered by the bombardment the villages and houses nearby had undergone, and the pews has been removed.

_For storage,_ said Alfie.

_Or firewood._

But there was still an altar at the choir end of the nave; a stone table with the emblem of the Magdelena - the Daemon of the Holy Spirit - carved on the front, superimposed on the symbol of the Cross of Sacrifice. There was no Holy Word, of course, but I had my prayer-book in my pocket so I knelt in front of the altar and murmured a few Collects from the section entitled _For Employment In Times Of National Peril_.

I realise I've not said much about my religious beliefs. Like everybody else at Highdean, I had been Confirmed in my faith after Alfie settled. There was Chapel at school every morning and evening and, despite what Aunt Sybil said, I went to St Anselm's or St Barnabas' fairly often during the school holidays. I had kept up my devotions in Mornington too, but I'd fallen behind after I ran away to Frankland.

Not that I needed to feel guilty about that. The Articles of War had made it perfectly clear that I had to balance my national duty with my duty to the Holy Spirit. "Render unto the King what is the King's, and unto the Holy Spirit what is the Holy Spirit's." The two duties - to God and to Nation - stood side by side. Neither could wholly override the other.

All the same, it was a relief to get the chance to see to my spiritual needs and I was happier within myself when I returned to the car. So was Mister Joyce. He had split a loaf in two and was chewing on it appreciatively.

'Hello,' he said, handing me a chunk of bread. 'Feeling better?'

He thought I'd gone to relieve myself. That idea annoyed me - what business was it of his? - so I told him I'd been into the church to pray.

'You believe in that stuff, do you?'

'Yes, of course. Why, don't you?'

'You believe that the Holy Spirit hears your prayers and answers them?'

'Yes. If they are righteous and sincerely meant, then your prayers are answered.'

'Always?'

'Yes, always. But not necessarily at the time or in the way you expect. Sometimes your prayers are answered and it's only later you realise it's happened.'

'And the Holy Spirit does this?'

'By moving in the hearts of men and their daemons, yes.' I looked at Mister Joyce's face. He was smiling lop-sidedly.

'And you really believe all that?'

'Yes, of course I do.'

'I see. Then we'd better not talk about it any more.'

I flared up. 'What do you mean by that? Eh? What do you mean, Mister Parry?'

'I mean this,' Mister Joyce leaned towards me, his good hand resting against the wall. 'I mean that I don't want to talk about it. But ask yourself this: If everybody's prayers are answered then what's all this about?' He hoisted his wooden arm and pointed to the church's shell-pocked walls and broken arches. 'Whose prayer was answered here? Ours? Or the Enemy's? Do our prayers and their prayers cancel each other's out? Are some of their prayers more righteous and sincere than ours? Is that why our boys and men are killed from time to time? Don't we pray hard enough? And, if our prayers do cancel each other, what's the point of fighting? Shouldn't we be fighting a praying war instead, to see if we can pray harder than they can? Shall we have a good pray right now and see if we can't kill an Afric warrior or two?' His voice was edged with bitterness and he looked disgusted.

Oh, but he was infuriating. Even though I was seething with anger, I could see that to shout at him would get me nowhere. Those horrible things he was saying either demanded a long, reasoned reply or silence.

'Shut up,' I said. 'You're talking rubbish.'

- 0 -

We rejoined the stream of vehicles going east. There was an oil-fuelled troop-carrier in front of us, chucking out smoke and fumes. I let the Dassault drop back a few yards to avoid getting poisoned. Even so, we could still hear the men singing an old marching chantey:

_  
We are the boys of the SDG,  
(Boasting boys, shouting boys)  
We are the boys who will make you flee,  
(Step aside for the boys!)  
We are the boys who will pass the test,  
(Boasting boys, shouting boys)  
We're the boys who're the very best!  
(Step aside for the fighting boys!)_

Something - maybe it was the dust in the air - was making my eyes water. 

_Holy Spirit save them_, said Alfie.

_Yes_, I said, remembering Sister Moulson and the Admissions Ward of the field hospital.

- 0 -

Eventually our luck ran out as I'd known it would. Around three o'clock the traffic slowed down and came to a halt. I wondered if the carriageway was blocked by a broken-down vehicle or perhaps there was a shell-hole in the road and we were having to inch around it over the rough ground. I disengaged the motor, turned down the naphtha feed and shut off the steam valve.

'Hang on, Mister Parry,' I said. 'I'll go and see what's going on.'

'Right you are, Sam.'

I jumped down and walked past the line of stalled vehicles up the side of the road, being careful to clump along like a man. The last thing I needed now was to be whistled at. There was a fork in the road about fifty yards ahead and by it a pair of wooden huts had been put up and wrapped around with barbed wire. A wire fence ran into the woods to left and right. By each hut stood an armoured man with a Vickers gun. A drop-down barrier was being operated by a middle-aged corporal on our side of the road and by a younger man on the other. Another queue was building up on the far side of the checkpoint. Every vehicle was being stopped and questioned. As I watched the gate was lifted and a water-tanker ground its gears as it passed through from the other side.

I walked back to the car. 'We've got to wait,' I said. 'Half an hour at least. Or turn back.'

'We're not turning back,' said Mister Joyce. 'We've got to go forward; carry on. Anyway, it'd look suspicious. Don't worry. These papers'll see us through.'

'All right,' I said.

We sat in the queue and waited. Every two or three minutes the troop-carrier in front lurched forward in a noxious cloud of black smoke. There was enough pressure left in the boiler to let me run the motor up and follow it without having to re-light the naphtha. Wait - jerk forward. Wait - jerk forward. I wasn't used to this. It'd been different in Mornington. Ambulances had priority over cars, buses, lorries and taxis. We'd never had to stop for anybody.

The longer we waited, the more tense and anxious Alfie and I became. Mister Joyce seemed confident, but I wasn't. For a start, although my documents were made out to Driver SC Moon - which was my name, near enough - his papers said his surname was Joyce, not Parry. It was so stupid - why did he have to adopt a false name? It would have been so much simpler not to.

_You mean it would have been better to tell the truth?_

_Alfie! Don't be so bloody sanctimonious. I'm a reformed character now._

My irritating daemon winked at me. We stopped and started and stopped and started and reached the front of the line at last and the corporal on the gate leaned over the side of the car.

'Right, mate,' he said. 'Show us your chitties!' His wolfhound-daemon stood close by his side with her teeth bared.

I grinned. 'Here you are, Corp.'

He riffled through the papers. 'Mister Joyce, mechanical SME, and Driver Sam Moon.' He looked at me more closely. 'Bloody 'ell! You shaving yet, young 'un?'

'Yes, Corp. Once a week, regular.'

'God 'elp us! Ain't you the big man. All right. Your papers are in order, but I can't let you through.'

'Why not?' Mister Joyce leaned over me. 'What's the matter? What's wrong?'

'It's like I said, sir. Your papers are in order, so far as I can tell. At least, they was in order when you left Blighty. But they've not been stamped.'

'Stamped?'

'Yes, sonny. Stamped. Validated. Where did you leave from this morning?'

'Sainte-Claude.'

'Right. Well, Sainte-Claude is where you'll have to go back to. Go back there, take your papers into the Movements Office and get 'em stamped. Then come back 'ere and I'll let you pass.'

'But-' Mister Joyce's face was turning pink. 'I've got important work to do. Colonel Braeburn is expecting me. He sent for me especially from London. There are... there is essential work for me to do. War work. Don't you understand?'

'Yes, sir, I understand. But your papers ain't stamped and I can't let you through. Now Sam, turn the car round. You're holding everyone up. Go back to Sainte-Claude like a good little boy and get your blasted papers stamped. Then come back here tomorrow, show me them, and we can all be friends. All right?'

Mister Joyce was furious. 'You'll get into trouble when I tell Colonel Braeburn you've held me up. Serious trouble.'

'Maybe I will, sir. But I'll be taken out and shot right now if I let you pass.'

I had a thought. 'Can't you telephone Colonel Braeburn, Corp? Get him or his ADC to confirm our details?'

'Well, maybe I could. Except I don't have a telephone.'

'There's one in the hut, you stupid man!' That was true. I could see the wires coming out of the eaves and running down along the side of the road.

'Now sir, there's no need to take that tone with me. There's a telephone in the office but I'm not in there, I'm here and I'm not allowed to leave my post. Fred!'

'Corporal?' said the man with the Vickers gun.

'Be ready to fire on my order!'

'Right, Corporal.' The muzzle of the gun pointed directly at a point halfway between Mister Joyce and me.

'That's better. Now, sir, would you _please_ ask your driver to turn around and take you back to Sainte-Claude?'

'We've not got much choice, have we, sir?' I wasn't altogether disappointed that Mister Joyce's plans had come unstuck, even though I was supposed to be going along with them. It was good to see him taken down a peg or two.

'All right. But you're going to regret this, Corporal.'

The NCO ignored him. 'See you tomorrow, sonny,' he said to me.

I re-lit the burner and adjusted the water feed to the boiler. The car responded with a happy hiss of steam. I was just reversing onto the verge to get the car turned around when a voice came from the direction of the hut. 'Stop!' An officer emerged from inside. Our corporal snapped to attention and saluted him. So, just in time, did I.

'Corporal, let these men through.' The officer wore the pips and laurel leaves of a half-colonel. His bird-daemon rested on his left shoulder and his face was shielded by his cap. 'I'll take responsibility for them.'

'Yes sir. Please sir, may I have your name for the log book?'

'Certainly, Corporal. Lieutenant-Colonel Braeburn, EOD Division.'

'Right you are, sir.' The corporal lifted up the barrier and I straightened the car out again.

The officer approached the car. 'Mister Parry?'

'Yes, Colonel?'

'Proceed as per our agreement. Rendezvous at the dock.'

'Yes, Colonel.'

I re-engaged the motor. As I checked for oncoming traffic I caught a glimpse of the officer's face. He was standing back to let us pass. I saw - why hadn't I noticed it when I'd first seen him? - that his eyes were a vivid, startling blue and a shock of recognition and unexpected desire ran its fingers down my back and settled, sizzling, in my loins. Him again! The old man on Hampstead Heath. The boy on the Pompey Docks. The young workman on the train. And now, a Brytish Army officer. What on earth was going on?

- 0 -

By six o'clock we were very close to the forward lines. It was comparatively quiet as the guns had fallen silent in preparation for the barrage and attempted advance that was likely to happen once the sun had gone down. We were surrounded by soldiers and their support crews - purposeful, determined men who had no interest in Mister Joyce and me so long as we kept out of their way. I pulled off the road. 'What now, Mister Parry? You _do_ know where we're going, don't you? That nice Colonel Braeburn said something about a rendezvous.'

Mister Joyce was looking tired and drawn and his Viola clung to his jacket sleeve with desperate claws. 'Yes, he did. We have to follow the line of support trenches to the south until we come to a wood of beech trees. In that wood we will find a stone hut with a locked door, painted green. I have the key to that door.'

I checked the car's gauges.' I hope it's not far. The boiler needs topping up and we're low on naphtha. We'll have to get some more fuel from somewhere before we turn back for home.'

'Let's not worry too much about that,' said Mister Joyce.

- 0 -

Nobody paid us any attention as we drove south. The road had deteriorated to the point where it was no more than a mud-track and it would have been quite impassable if the weather hadn't been fine and dry for the last few days. The car creaked and groaned and its springs bounced and jiggled as I negotiated our way as carefully as I could. My companion was looking more uncomfortable than ever. After half an hour or so we came to a wood, but it wasn't the right one and anyway it was nearly impossible to tell what variety of trees had once grown there as they were now only bare sticks, pointing up like anbarograph poles. One of them had the remains of a pair of uniform trousers hanging in it, and in another the top half of a man's skeleton swung suspended from one of its leafless branches. I glanced at Mister Joyce. He was looking sick and I could see his lips moving.

The light was starting to fade. Neither Mister Joyce nor I had had anything to eat or drink since our argument in the deserted church and the car's tiller was pushing and pulling more and more on my tired arm as the road became rougher and rougher. We would have to stop soon and find shelter. Just as I was beginning to get worried we came to a copse where the trees still grew unaffected by artillery fire. 'Here?' I said.

'Here,' said Mister Joyce, and I got out, walked round to the side of the car and opened the door for him. He picked up his knapsack, climbed down slowly and painfully and rested his weight on my shoulder. I helped him to the nearest tree, which he leaned against while I ran the car into the wood. I doused the burners and released the safety valve. Steam hissed out and Mister Joyce was starting to tell me to shut the valve off because we'd be heard, when the question of noise suddenly became irrelevant. There was a loud, high-pitched whistling sound low overhead followed by a brilliant blue flash and an earth-rattling thump. Our forces - or the Enemy's forces - were getting ready for the night's advance. The evening artillery barrage had begun.

I ran over to Mister Joyce and grabbed hold of him. Whether or not this was the right wood, it was cover of some kind; and cover was what we needed very badly. Two more screeches overhead; and the darkening sky was torn apart by shell-bursts. Shrapnel ripped through the air with a sound like a giant tearing paper.

I lifted Mister Joyce's left shoulder and slipped my right arm under his. My sword bumped between us. Linked together like some curious tripedal insect we scrabbled into the wood. Another howl overhead; and straight away a crash and a roar, and another and yet another. The explosions were getting closer, as if the Enemy's gunners - or ours - were trying to find our range. With each blast came a blinding flash of terrible light, throwing our shadows hard against the trees.

'It's the ones you don't hear that get you,' I gasped. Another ghastly shriek, and a crash followed by a hollow boom sounded behind us. I turned to look, and Mister Joyce cursed under his breath. The car - or what was left of it - had been struck by a shell, its boiler had burst and its remains cast into the air like a toy a spoilt child had rejected. I looked at Mister Joyce. His face was grey with fear and he was sweating. I turned again, and as I turned I lost my footing and we fell to the ground. Another double blast and shrapnel rocketed through the leaves over our heads, shredding them.

We staggered to our feet, but I wasn't strong enough to hold him up and we collapsed against a tree-trunk. The battery of artillery fire was now almost continuous and, although we didn't seem to be the gunners' target we were still in very great danger from a stray shell. 'Come on!' I shouted over the roar of gunfire. I stood up and Mister Joyce let his weight rest on me again. I groaned - he was so heavy and, in the semi-darkness and uncertain footing of the wood, so hard to support. It had been bad enough before we hired the car; and that was in daylight on good roads and pavements. This was nearly impossible. I took another step forward and Mister Joyce tried to move his left leg in step with my right, but it was no good and we lurched over and landed in a heap. Another shell-burst directly overhead silhouetted the leaves in sharp outline before tearing them from their branches and showering us with green fragments.

From where we lay on the ground I could see further ahead into the wood. As the debris from the last explosion settled I saw, through the stripped trees, something grey standing fifty feet or so from us. 'Look!' I said. 'Is that it?'

Mister Joyce followed my pointing finger. 'It'd better be,' he replied.

We got to our feet again; slowly and painfully. Mister Joyce had fallen against me and my right side was badly bruised. 'Come on,' I said. There was a _crump_ from nearby; and splintered tree-branches landed all around us. This wood was going to look like the one we had seen earlier before much longer, and if we didn't want to be found smashed and dead in it we had to find shelter very soon. We took a step forward. That was all right, so we took another, and another. Yes; it looked as if we were getting the hang of it at last. And then there was yet another terrible explosion and we were lifted from the ground and thrown against a tree trunk. I was badly winded. I felt dizzy and confused. Mister Joyce was slumped back, his head at a funny angle. I couldn't tell if he were alive or dead.

Two more shells landed not far off. More debris flew past us. 'Mister Joyce?' I said into the sudden quiet, but there was no reply. I slapped his cheek. 'Mister Joyce?' Still nothing. What could I do now? I didn't see how we could possibly make it to the shelter of the hut if Mister Joyce was unconscious or dead. I wasn't strong enough.

_Oh no. Is this it, Alfie? Is this where it all ends?_

_No. Look_. Oh yes, there was Viola, gasping and quivering in terror but still with us; still present. Mister Joyce was still alive.

_Reach into his pocket._

_Which one?_

Crash. Another shell landed close by. Somewhere to the left of us a tree fell with a long groan. In the direction of the lines a flickering red light was growing inexorably. The wood had caught fire.

_Right-hand trouser pocket. And Sunny..._

_Yes?_

_Please let me help you..._

- 0 -

We got to the door of the hut just as a cluster of four shell-bursts fell around us - one for each quarter of the compass, it seemed. I was beginning to wonder if we were suffering what the wireless bulletins called "collateral damage" or whether, as on the _Marie-Louise_, we had become a target after all. I took the key from my pocket and inserted it into the lock. It turned easily, as if the wards had been oiled only yesterday, and the door opened inwards. We practically fell through it. Inside it was pitch-black dark, but as my eyes adjusted I could see that there was an iron ring-bolt set into the floor. I let Mister Joyce's limp body slip to the ground as gently as I could. Viola nuzzled against his cheek. A shell landed nearby and the hut shook. It could only be a temporary shelter - a direct hit would destroy it and kill us all.

It was obvious what we needed to do, so I stood by the side of the hatch into which the ring-bolt was set and heaved hard on it. Nothing happened. I pulled again. Still nothing, and then I saw the reason - it was locked shut by a sliding latch. I knelt down and tugged at its handle and like the outside lock it slid back easily as if it had been recently used. Then I tried the ring again. Heavens, but the hatch-cover weighed a ton! I lifted it a few inches, but my strength failed me and it fell back again. Three loud bangs outside reminded me of our danger. I bent my knees and pulled up again with all my strength. I _had_ to do this by myself. Nobody else could help me.

The hatch-cover lifted again, and this time I stuck a foot underneath it, preventing it from falling all the way back. I rested for a few seconds and then pulled again. Heave, and up; and suddenly it tilted right over and fell with a clang. I fell back with it, but only for a moment. I got back to my feet and looked down into the hole which the lifted hatch revealed. It was utterly black in there but there was no time to be afraid of that or to hesitate. It was our only possible refuge. Gasping for breath and grunting with the effort I pulled Mister Joyce across the floor and pushed him through the hatchway. He disappeared into the gloom and I heard what sounded like his body bumping against a set of stairs. Good - I'd been afraid there'd be a sheer drop. I launched myself after him.

There were ten stairs, carved from blocks of stone. I found Mister Joyce lying against the bottom one, groaning loudly. That was a relief. They used to tell us in the Brigade that it was the quiet patients who died and the noisy ones who lived. At this rate we might just live. It was impossible for me to pull the hatch-cover back behind us, so I took hold of Mister Joyce's legs and pulled him deeper into the cellar which, I presumed, led back from the steps and propped him up against the wall. Not a moment too soon for, with a sound like the end of the world, the hut overhead took the full force of a shell and collapsed with a sound like a quarry-blast. A cascade of stone and earth tumbled down the steps and sprayed across the floor next to us. The last traces of light from above vanished instantly. The hatchway was blocked - probably by tons of debris - and we were trapped underground without light, food or water. It was deadly quiet.

The shock of our situation hit me then as it hadn't before when the gunfire was all around us. We were buried alive with no hope of rescue. I could think of nothing worse, no fate more appalling. I felt sick and full of despair. I got up and walked blindly until I bumped into the wall on the other side. I slumped back against it, put my head in my hands and cried.


	20. The Dome

_The Dome_

_I will fly a yellow paper sun in your sky,  
When the wind is high,  
When the wind is high._

Hal Hackaday & Lee Pockriss

  
This chapter is dedicated, in grateful memoriam, to Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913 - 1966)

'Come on,' said Alfie. 'Let's see what we can do for Mister Joyce.'

It was wonderful to hear a real voice in the all-enclosing darkness. 'All right.' I stood up. 'I love you, Alfie.'

'Of course you do, you silly girl.'

'Don't "silly girl" me, you rodent!'

'Don't be silly, then.'

'Grrrr...ouch!' I had walked into the stone steps and barked my shin. 'Oh, beggary!'

Alfie had been hurt too, so he said nothing.

- 0 -

I found Mister Joyce by walking around the steps and across to the other side of the underground chamber. I've said that it was utterly silent, but that wasn't really true. It was more that my ears had been so battered by the shelling we'd undergone that it took them a while to adjust to the relative quiet. But from time to time there was a distant thump from above, followed by the patter of dust falling from the roof. In the end I found Mister Joyce by smell. A powerful whiff of alcohol guided my nose to where he lay. I hadn't known he'd been keeping his own supply of brandy, or whiskey or whatever it was. He'd never offered to share it with me. Perhaps he'd thought I was too young to be drinking strong waters, even though he'd made no comment when he'd seen me buying brandy the night before. Oh, well. What strange creatures men were, especially this one.

I worked out by touch that he was lying on his left side. He was breathing steadily but his eyes were closed. I called his name a few times and shook his shoulder, but he made no response. Perhaps he needed a stimulant to wake him up. I couldn't find his bottle of brandy, so I took my own out of my pocket and put it to his lips.

I think it must have gone up his nose as well, for he spluttered and sat up suddenly. 'Jane? Jane?' he said. 'Lyra? Is it you? Am I dead again?' I didn't understand what he meant. He sounded confused.

'Mister Joyce?' I said. 'Are you all right? It's me, Driver Moon. Not Jane. Not Lyra.'

'Driver Moon?'

'Yes, me. Sonya Moon.'

'Oh, yes. Sam. The driver. Oh...' He cried out in pain and fell back. I put my arms under his shoulders and lifted him back up. His knapsack was by his side and I put it under his head as a makeshift pillow.

'Have some more brandy, Mister Joyce.' I held the bottle to his mouth, or where I judged his mouth to be.

'Not brandy... no good. Left coat pocket... bottle...' He was gasping in agony, taking fast, shallow breaths. I reached over him and put my hand in his coat pocket.

'Ow!' I pulled it out again in a hurry. There was a sharp object in the pocket and I had cut myself on it. Just to make it worse, there was something stinging in the cut.

'I'm sorry, Mister Joyce. The bottle's broken. It's cut my hand.'

'Oh... Oh...' There was a world of despair in Mister Joyce's voice. 'Has it leaked away?'

'Yes, I'm afraid so.'

'Then it's all gone. All of it. There's no hope... Oh, no, no, no.... Where are we? I can't see. Am I blind?'

I explained to Mister Joyce what had happened after he had been knocked out in the wood. 'We're trapped in a cellar underneath the hut in the trees. I don't know what to do. I'll try to dig us out in a minute but I don't think it'll do any good. There must be some filthy great big blocks of stone heaped up there.'

'Nobody knows we're here. Nobody'll try to get down to us from up there.'

'Not even Colonel Braeburn?'

'He can't help us. Give me some more of that brandy, would you?' I held the quarter-bottle up to him again. My cut hand had stopped hurting and for some reason I realised I no longer cared about the awful position we were in.

Mister Joyce took a serious swig. 'Ahhh!'

'Better?' I took the bottle back.

'Yes.'

'So what do we do now?'

'What I've been meaning for us to do all along. Miss Moon, would you get up and walk along the wall, keeping your left hand resting on it? I'm going to recite the alphabet while you do that. If you find you can't hear me, turn back.'

'Why? What am I looking for?'

'A passageway.'

I did as Mister Joyce had said and walked around the wall. First there was a right turn, and then a left. I hardly needed to hear the sound of Mister Joyce's a-b-c receding in the distance. The enclosed feeling had become more intense. I was walking down a passageway. 'All right,' I said, turning back. 'I've found it. Where does it go? Will it get us out of here?'

'Come and help me up. Then I'll tell you.'

- 0 -

It was a tunnel, Mister Joyce told me, and it went all the way to Geneva.

'It does? How far's that?'

'About four miles.'

_Oh good grief._ 'You mean we've got to walk four miles in the dark? What's it doing here? Why doesn't the our army know about it? Why aren't they using it themselves?'

'They do. Colonel Braeburn briefed me. You saw. I'll explain.'

We were lumbering, one step at a time, down the underground passageway, keeping as close to the left-hand wall as we could without bumping into it. Mister Joyce had given me his knapsack to carry. Every step was torture for him, I could tell, and my shoulders were staring to ache badly with the effort of holding him upright. I thought I'd better put off demanding explanations from Mister Joyce for now, even though I wasn't sure how much I believed in "Colonel Braeburn".

We took some more slow, one-at-a-time steps along the tunnel. I started to count them. After a while I had counted enough steps, and guessed enough passage of time, to estimate that we were going at a rate of about one step every other second and that each step took us about twelve inches forwards. Mental arithmetic wasn't my best subject, but I had to try to work out how long it would take us to cover the four miles to Geneva. Let's see. Suppose we could walk twelve hours a day, taking rest stops and sleep time into account. Thirty feet a minute, multiply by sixty; one thousand, eight hundred feet an hour. Multiply that by twelve. That made, er, twenty one thousand, six hundred feet a day. How many miles was that? How many feet in a mile? One thousand, seven hundred and sixty yards timesed by three made five thousand, two hundred and eighty feet.

So; about twenty thousand feet each day and about five thousand feet in a mile. That meant we could go twenty divided by five, which was four miles a day. Well, that was better!

'Mister Joyce,' I said. 'I've been doing some sums. It's only going to take us twelve hours of walking to get to Geneva. We can do that easily!

'Mister Joyce... Mister Joyce?' He didn't answer but slumped against me with a sigh. We stopped walking. So much for arithmetic.

- 0 -

We sat with our backs to the wall, recovering our strength.

'Miss Moon...'

'Yes? Are you ready to carry on?'

'In a minute. There's something I've got to tell you. Something I've got to own up to.'

'Go on.'

'It's that bottle - the one in my pocket. Did you think it was brandy? Were you annoyed that I'd had it all along and hadn't shared it with you?'

'No, I don't think so. It was only a bottle of brandy, wasn't it?'

'No, it wasn't. It was tincture of poppy. Opium. A drug. I've been taking it for years.'

'For the pain in your leg?'

'Yes.'

'Are you... are you dependent on it? An addict?' They had warned us about the dangers of drugs in the Brigade. I knew some of the nurses sneaked poppy tablets from the stores or inhaled chlorors from time to time or when things got too bad for them.

'Yes, I am. I'm not proud of it. I wanted you to know. It's going to make it hard for us to get down the tunnel.'

'Because of the pain?'

'Yes - and because... because I go.. funny when I need a dose. I shake badly. There are cravings... They're awful. I'm ashamed of myself. There. Now I've told you.'

'Oh...' A great wave of sympathy washed over me, mingled with heart-wrenching guilt. I'd been absolutely vile to this poor man, and all the time I'd not paid nearly as much attention as I should to his injuries - because he hid them away. They were just a nuisance as far as I was concerned. I hadn't thought about his pain and I'd never guessed how badly hurt he was inside. I paused to let this new knowledge soak into me.

'Peter... I can call you Peter, can't I?'

'I wish you would.'

'I've not been very nice to you. It wasn't fair. Oh - if only you'd told me earlier!'

'You wouldn't have minded?'

'Of course not. Oh, you daft beggar, why should I mind? I've been in hospitals, and I've driven an ambulance and worked up at the Front. Don't you think I've seen worse things than opium dependency?'

'You're not worried about my being a poppy-head?'

'No. I don't mind. In fact, I think I picked up a little bit of it myself when I cut my hand in your pocket, so that makes me a poppy-head too. And you're to call me Sunny. Good heavens! Here we are, stuck in a desperate dark hole under the earth and we're calling each other Mister Joyce and Miss Moon! It's bloody ridiculous!'

'So it is,' said Peter.

_I'm proud of you_, said Alfie.

- 0 -

We sat and talked. I wanted to know more about this secret way into the City. Peter said that it had been dug nearly forty years ago, as part of its defences. It was an escape route to be used by the senior clerics of the Magisterium as a last resort if they needed to get away in a hurry, for example if the City was invaded from the east. The tunnel was narrow so that it couldn't be used by an invading army. In addition, there ware iron bulkheads that could be lowered to prevent, for example, men with bombs from entering unseen and causing death and destruction in the City.

'Won't they be closed now?'

'No.'

'How do you know?'

That led on to a long discussion about the history of the City of Geneva. What it all boiled down to was that since the Blessed Pierre Leroque had become the head of the Society of the Holy Spirit there had been divisions within the Church - between those who supported his policy of spiritual liberalism combined with commercial expansion, and the Fundamentalists who regarded his doctrines as apostasy and yearned for the old days of the Consistory Court of Discipline.

'There used to be regular public floggings and burnings, you know.'

I knew - I'd studied history at Highdean. 'Yes, they were unjust. We know better now.'

'Do we? I wonder. What about the War? Do you think we're doing well?

'We're advancing all the time. The Enemy might have the City surrounded, but they haven't been able to get into it, have they? It's much too well defended for that. Meanwhile our forces are pushing the Pagans back all the time. We'll chase them all the way to Hindustan by winter. They won't dare to try start another War.'

'You're probably right, Sunny. But tell me - why do you think the War began?'

'It was the Pagan Horde. The Africs and the Tartars. They wanted to take the Holy City away from us.'

'Do you know why they wanted to do that?'

'Because they're unholy.'

'OK... Any other reason?'

'They want to steal the Holy Word from us.'

'That's right. The Society of the Holy Spirit guards the Holy Word, which is all the teaching of God as revealed and discovered by the clerkes and theologians of the world's centres of learning and research. It's a matter of great significance in the workings of the world's economy.'

'Yes, I know. God, through the Holy Spirit, shows the theologians the mysteries of His Creation. They note them down, and send their revelations to the Citadel of the Holy Spirit in Geneva for safe keeping.'

'Right. And then the Society, though its agencies, redistributes those mysteries for the glory of God and the well-being of Mankind.'

'Yes. Sorry, Peter, but I don't see what you're getting at.'

'It's this, Sunny. The Society does not distribute God's gifts freely; in both senses of the word. Firstly, it charges tithes - substantial tithes - for the Communion of the Word. Secondly, it only reveals its knowledge to its supporters. Not everyone who knocks on the doors of the Citadel is allowed inside, and of those who gain admittance not all are heard. Many leave empty-handed, either because they have been rejected or because the tithe for the knowledge they seek is set at such a high level that they cannot afford it.'

'Are you saying that the Africs and the Tartars are invading the Holy City because they weren't righteous enough to be granted God's Word?'

'Think of it like this, Sunny. Imagine a man - a man who has no money but who owns a field. The soil of the field is fertile and he has a store of grain set aside. If he could only sow that grain in his field, he would raise a fine crop of wheat. But in order to sow the grain he needs a plough. So he goes to a wealthy man and he says to him, "Please give me your spare plough or the money to buy a plough, so that I may grow wheat in my field and feed my wife and children."

'"The wealthy man replies, 'I did not become rich by giving my money and possessions away to all and sundry. Instead, I will lend it to you."

'"Thank you," says the first man.

'"But wait," says the wealthy man. "Money has a value of its own. If I lend you this money I shall require you to give it back to me with interest."

'"Gladly," says the first man. "Just as soon as I have brought in my harvest, I shall sell it in the market and return your money to you."

'"That is well," says the wealthy man, "Because I own the market and I set its prices. But listen to me. Your harvest may fail, and then where will my money have gone? I require more security than that. If you want me to lend you my money so that you may buy a plough, you must first grant me title to your field. Then you must agree to work for me to till that field, and you must hand over all the harvest to my granaries. In exchange, I will pay you a weekly wage and permit you to spend it in my market, where you may buy the necessities of life at the very reasonable prices I have set."

'"So, in order to feed my children I must give you my field?" said the man. "I cannot do that - it belonged to my father, and his father before him. I cannot pay that price."

'"Then you, your wife and your children can starve; and when you are all dead I will take your vacant field anyway, for there will be nobody to prevent me. Now get out of my sight, before I set my dogs on you!"

'And the man went home empty-handed to his wife. "Light of my eyes," he said. "The rich man will not give me a plough, nor will he lend me the money to buy a plough of our own unless I hand over our lives and my inheritance in return."

"Then," she replied, "He is an unjust man and our enemy, and it our duty to fight him. You and I will have to take the wealthy man's money from him by force. It is the only way to save the lives of our children." And the man had to agree with his wife.

'That' s the way it is between the Magisterium and the Pagan Nations, Sunny.'

I sat back, stunned. 'That's... that's blasphemy! I don't believe you! It's not like that at all!'

'Tell that to the hungry peoples of Africa. And ask yourself why the City of Geneva is covered by an armoured concrete dome.'

- 0 -

We lurched down the tunnel for another hour. At least, I think it was an hour. It was so hard to tell in the darkness. Then we sat down again on the cold floor for another rest. I'd been thinking.

'Peter?'

'Yes?'

'In the story you told me - are you saying that the man who owned the field went on to assault the wealthy man and try to steal his money?'

'That's what happened next, yes.'

'But that wasn't right. It was wrong of him to do that.'

'But his family was starving. What else could he do?'

I had an answer to that. 'Back at home, if there's an argument between two farmers - over a hedge or a field or a lane or something like that - then they go to see the justice. He listens to what they say and then he settles the disagreement. If the first man had gone to the magistrate instead of attacking the wealthy man he would have been treated fairly and a way would have been found to help him.'

Peter was quiet for a minute. 'Sunny, don't take this amiss, what I'm going to say. You told me before that your family had prospered by honest dealing, and I'm sure you're telling me the truth. You may be a pain in the neck-' Alfie sniggered, 'but you're an _honourable_ pain. I can see that.'

'It's jolly decent of you to say so,' I said. Alfie jabbed me in the ribs._ Sarcasm!_

'But listen. The Moon family owns quite a lot of south Oxfordshire, doesn't it?'

'Yes, just about all of it.'

'And they're very influential in politics. Like your father is, for example.'

'Yes...'

'Suppose a neighbouring landowner had a quarrel with you and you couldn't sort it out between yourselves. He'd go to the justice, yes?'

'Yes.' I thought I could see what Peter was getting at.

'And who is the justice?'

Mister Joyce had caught me. I sighed. 'Daddy's cousin Bob. But look, it's not like you're trying to make out. He'd do his best to be impartial. He'd have to be or nobody'd trust him!'

'I'm sure he would. But your neighbour wouldn't see it that way. Even if the Church had perfectly credible reasons for denying the Afric Nations access to the Holy Word, they still wouldn't be believed. Against the rulings of the Magisterium there is no court of appeal. Their decisions are final.'

'Look... I can see what you're saying. But people are dying! I've seen more of the fighting than you have. I've been at the Front. I was there when the Zepps were bombing London. I saw women and children killed! I saw the injured men coming back home, every day. It was horrible. I know what it's like and you don't. And there's Gerry...'

'My son Danny is in the army. He's a second lieutenant.'

'Oh.' I shook my head. 'Oh heavens, I'm sorry. You must be worried about him, and I'm only making it worse by going on like this. And you're hurt too. But - fighting's wrong! Killing's wrong!'

'Yes, they are. That's why we're here. We've got to try to stop them.'

- 0 -

More dead steps in the darkness. We spoke little, except once when I had a sudden thought. 'Peter? We're in Enemy territory, aren't we? I mean, we must be underneath them by now.'

'Yes, I expect we are.'

'But sooner or later we'll pass underneath the walls of Geneva and then we'll be with friends again.' My voice echoed dully in the passage.

'Let's hope so.'

'What do you mean? They might not be our friends?'

'Let's just say we'll need to tread carefully and watch who we talk to and what we say to them.'

'Oh.'

- 0 -

I was dying for a ciggie, so I helped Peter to sit down by the side of the tunnel, searched through my pockets and found the _Tinta Rosa_ packet and my half-empty box of Swan Vestas. I took out a cigarette and struck a match to light it. The passage was briefly illuminated by yellow light. Its walls were lined with bricks and the roof was slightly arched.

'Oh beggary!' I felt very, very stupid.

'I've been waiting for you to do that,' said Peter.

'You mean... you mean you knew I had matches all along and you didn't tell me? You've been letting us blunder around in the dark all this time and you _knew_? I don't believe it!' I slumped against the wall. It was, for the first time since we had started our trek, damp to the touch.

'I know where we're going. We haven't needed light. We might want the matches later. We should save them.'

'You idiot! You absolute idiot! Don't they sell matches in Geneva?'

'Yes, I suppose they do.'

'They we can buy some there. Oh bloody hell, Peter!'

After that, whenever either of us stumbled on an uneven part of the floor or bumped into a protruding piece of the wall we'd say 'Got a light, mate?' and fall about shrieking with laughter. It was like on the wireless when Joey Dunn says, 'Where's me old scrubber?' and everybody howls. It helped us keep going.

We needed that help. We were tired and hungry and thirsty and the dank atmosphere of the place was getting to me. I'm only talking about my feelings here, of course. Even now, I only have the haunting of an idea of how bad it was for Peter.

- 0 -

I suppose we must have spent about a day and a half underground. It was completely impossible to keep track of the passage of time mentally and there was no point in lighting a match and checking Peter's watch. It had gone the same way as the alethiometer, and had stopped for ever.

After an uncountable number of hours we stopped and tried to sleep. It was practically impossible. The air was neither warm nor cold, but as soon as you lay down on the ground or rested against the walls you felt the warmth being drawn out of you, as if you were lying in your grave. We lay together like spoons with Peter's jacket between us and the ground, and my tunic resting on top. I put my arms around him, crossed them over his chest and held him close to me.

At some point in that endless night I woke and knew that Peter was asleep and dreaming. He was making small spasmodic movements and muttering under his breath. Was it the poppy-need he'd told me about?

_No. He's running. He's running freely along a country lane and up the sides of a grass-green valley. He's ten years old and he's chasing his brother Tom to the top of the hill. They're both trailing kites behind them. There's a fine breeze today - it's a great day for kite-flying. Viola is hawk-formed - her wings are broad and sharp-pinioned._

_Oh, Alfie. Let it be a beautiful day for them - the very best day it could possibly be._

- 0 -

We passed through a zone where the air was moist and the walls ran with water. That was murder, because we couldn't stop and rest - there were puddles on the ground. I'm not ashamed to say that we cupped our hands and drank that foul, stinking water. It might make us ill, so it might; but the alternative was worse. It was then that my tired muscles screamed the loudest. It was then, too, that I most wanted Alfie to Change and help carry Peter the way he'd done when we had run for the shelter of the hut. But I refused to let him do that. What good would it do us if I came to rely too much on Alfie putting himself at risk unless the situation was one of life or death? I wasn't a little girl any more and I could no longer use Alfie's capabilities in a casual way. That word - _incubus_ - and the remembrance of what we had suffered in the Chelsea Barracks prevented me; and he understood. Besides, what would Peter Joyce have thought?

- 0 -

From time to time the tunnel opened out into a wider space or cavern. We could feel it as a change in the texture of the air and a release of the pressure on our ears. Every time this happened I thought we were coming to the end of our underground ordeal, and every time I was disappointed. That is, until - and I refused to believe it at first, so used had I become to breathing the air of total darkness - a suspicion of light, a teasing of the eyes, began to grow in the distance ahead of us. At the same time, the floor tilted under our feet and sloped upwards. Step by painful step we advanced; and every step was all the harder now for being uphill.

We didn't stop. Not now our objective was in sight. We carried on; and every shallow breath I drew was red-hot and hissed out through clenched teeth. Every step was twelve inches of agony. Peter's head bumped hard against my shoulder each time his stump landed on the ground. I don't think he knew he was doing it, but he made a sound that was half a sigh and half a groan at every one of our joint footfalls.

Neither of us looked at each other. Nor did we look ahead of us. It would have been too bad; to have seen how far there was still to go, to have counted how many more footsteps we would have to make before we got there. So, when we did reach the end of the tunnel it was with a bang against a brick and a cry of desperation as we fell against the rungs of an iron ladder. I tried to hold onto it, but my hand was all pins and needles and I couldn't get a grip. Peter and I landed in a heap on the ground and, with a shock I had never experienced before his daemon Viola fell into my arms. Immediately, and despite my own feelings of overwhelming tiredness and hunger, I found myself transported. I left my own body and found myself - at least in part - occupying Peter's.

Suddenly I had no left arm and only half a leg. My breathing was tight and my head was wrapped in a throbbing iron band. My ribs were bruised and ached dully. But more; far more, far worse than those symptoms, bad though they were, was the pain in my mind. _Poppy_. I wanted it. I had to have it. There was nothing more important than finding a pharmacist's shop and asking for, and receiving, a bliss-giving, pain-banishing bottle of laudanum and drinking its contents. I could think of nothing else. The ghastliness of it - the horror of finding that my mind had been taken over by an artificial chemical desire - made me cry out and my hand jerked spastically. I couldn't stand it - I had to let go of Viola. I had to get away from that clawing, grabbing _thing_ that was sucking up my spirit.

_No, Sunny. Hold on!_ Alfie leapt from my side and landed on Peter's shoulder. He rested his cheek against Peter's own and licked at his face with his quick little tongue. _We've got to help him. He's dying._

Alfie was right. Peter's face was grey and his eyelids flickered randomly. Worse than that, Viola seemed to be shifting in and out of reality as I held her. I lifted her up to my face and looked into her eyes. They were dull and smeared out of focus. On an impulse I kissed them; one, two, left, right. At the same time, Alfie's lips pressed against Peter's.

A diabolical little rhyme ran through my head, over and over again:

_Think blue,  
Count two.  
Look for a red shoe.  
Think blue,  
Count two.  
Look for a red shoe._

Round and round it went; maddening, insistent, meaning nothing. Peter's body shuddered in my arms. I had no idea whether I was doing any good; any good at all. Peter was dying, and I was on the floor of a cellar - or so I supposed it was - under the Holy City of Geneva, where the townspeople might be friendly and they might not and I would have to be careful what I said. I was shaking with Peter, and I wanted poppy more than I had ever wanted anything before. I wanted, wanted, wanted it.

Slowly, so slowly, the quivering in our bodies died down. The colour returned to Peter's face, revealing how dirty, unshaven and scratched it was. I supposed I looked the same. Finally, his eyes opened and he looked at me. Alfie returned to my side and I let go of Viola.

'So that's how it feels to be a girl...' His voice was a croaking whisper.

'I hope you enjoyed it!'

'More than you enjoyed being me, I suspect.' A fragile, ghostly smile chased across his mouth. I smiled in return. I didn't know what to say, either about the poppy-craving or about the experience of living in his body. Was that how it was when men and women made love? Was that how it would be for me some day? That was too much for me to think about, so instead I said the first thing that came into my head:

'Peter, what was all that funny stuff that about thinking blue? What did it mean?'

'Ah, you heard it too. The whole verse goes:

_Lady, if a man,  
Tries to bother you, you can  
Think blue,  
Count two,  
And look for a red shoe._

'_Think Blue, Count Two_. It's a beautiful story about sin and redemption. I'll read it to you one day.'

- 0 -

The iron ladder led up fifteen feet to an empty room with a single wooden door, lit by high windows of frosted glass. It was the diffused light through those windows that had percolated down the passageway and shown us the way for those last terrible hundred steps. I stood at the bottom of the ladder and helped Peter climb, holding his stump while he gained purchase with his right leg. Once he was safely at the top I slung the knapsack over my shoulders and followed him. The ladder was much harder to climb than I had expected. I was - we both were - weak with hunger. Peter had to help me climb the last few rungs. At last I stood unsteadily at the top of the ladder and looked at Peter. He was filthy. I looked down at myself. So was I. We were covered in leaf-mould and our trousers and boots were soaked and caked with mud. Dirt from the tunnel walls was streaked down our jackets. 'Come here, mucky,' I said, and ran my hands down his clothes, trying to get rid of the worst of the mess as best I could. Then I brushed myself down.

'We look like a couple of tramps!' said Peter ruefully.

'Never mind. Come on, let's see where this door leads.' I held out my hand.

Peter shook his head. 'I'll have to try to walk by myself.'

'Can you?'

'Yes. Thanks to you and Alfie, I can.'

I led the way and opened the door. Not slowly - that would have been the same as admitting I was a trespasser. Instead, I flung it back and walked through it. I found myself in a deserted corridor with a white marble floor and wood-panelled walls. A few yards to the right was another door, of iron-studded oak. Peter followed me into the corridor. 'Come on,' I said. 'That way.' Again, I led the way. The door was heavy and creaked as I pulled it back. We passed through it and came out at the top of a short flight of steps leading down to a narrow street. 'Ready?

'Ready.'

I let Peter go first and he descended the flight with a rolling gait, rather like a sailor's. I went down with him. It would have been wonderful if I could have held his hand, but I still looked much more like a boy than a girl, and we'd very quickly got into trouble if we'd showed any such attachment in public. So we proceeded as best we could down the street which, after running fifty yards or so between high buildings of grey stone, led to a wide-open space; like a park except that instead of wide lawns of grass there was an expanse of paving slabs, on which were scattered trees and shrubs in wooden boxes with benches arranged in neat rows and squares between them.

'That's where the lake used to be before they drained it and filled it with earth,' said Peter.

'Let's go there and sit down for a while. Decide what to do next.'

We had to cross a wide roadway called the Quai des Bergues to reach the park. As we looked around us we caught our first sight of some of the inhabitants of Geneva. They were brightly dressed - putting our own drab clothes to shame - and walked briskly and purposefully up and down the broad pavements which bordered the road. I immediately noticed that there was something slightly odd about them - something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Open cars with (I supposed) anbarically powered motors whirred up and down in front of us. We waited for a gap in the traffic, crossed over to the other side of the road and found a bench to rest on.

I looked back the way we had come. The ground on which the city was built rose up past modern, official-looking concrete blocks of offices and apartments to the old town, which was constructed of darker, more weathered stone. The buildings there were, I could see, clustered closer together and the streets were crooked and irregular, in contrast with the sweeping boulevard we had just crossed. It was no surprise that our secret passage had emerged in the newer part of the town, nearer the old water-level of the lake. I turned to Peter.

'Did you see? There's something funny about the people here. Look!'

A woman passed by, pushing a perambulator and followed by a boy of about seven years old, holding his mouse-daemon in his right hand.

'See? They're looking down all the time. I know tall people look down as they walk along so they won't bump into the short people but those people aren't tall, are they? Why do you think that is?'

'Look up,' said Peter.

I tilted back my head. I had thought it was a cloudy day as the light from the sky was so grey and flat and the air so lifeless. But that was not so.

_You can't tell if it's cloudy or not_, said Alfie.

No, you couldn't. Arranged around the perimeter of the city centre were a number of powerful floodlights, spaced at regular intervals. They cast their light - a curious, blue-grey shadowy light against the overarching concrete dome that roofed the city from horizon to horizon. The sky seemed to be bearing down on us; perpetually falling, held up only by the xenon glow that illuminated it.

'Oh, good grief,' I said. 'That's absolutely ghastly. No wonder nobody looks at it.'

'No,' said Peter. 'Neither must we.'

'What shall we do? Apart from looking at the pavement all the time we're outside so nobody can tell we're from out of town?'

'Go there,' Peter replied, lifting his right arm and pointing north. 'Into the Old Town. We must find somewhere to stay and something to eat, and we must get new clothes as soon as we possibly can and try to blend in. We're standing out like a sore thumb at the moment.'

'Yes,' I said. And it seemed to me that, horrible as our journey in the tunnel had been, its clammy darkness was infinitely preferable to this terrible, ever-falling, soul-destroying mockery of a sky. I shivered, although there was no wind and the air was not cold. 'This is a ghastly place. I don't know how long I can stand it here.'

'Neither do I,' said Peter, 'Neither do I. But Sunny,' and he looked at me and smiled wearily, 'I don't think it will be for very long. Not very long at all.'


	21. The Attic

_The Attic_

_Nose pressed hard on frosted glass  
Gazing as the swollen mass  
On concrete fields where grows no grass  
Stumbles blindly on_

_Iron trees smother the air  
But withering they stand and stare  
Through eyes that neither know nor care  
Where the grass is gone_

David McWilliams

The girl has gone out to buy food. I'm stuck indoors. Not that I'm complaining; and I shouldn't be calling her "the girl", either. Her name's Sunny and if I were a younger man I'm sure I would have fallen in love with her by now.

That was a foolish thing to write. I ought to scratch it out, but that'd only make a mess of this book. Instead, I'll let it stand as a monument to my own ridiculous nature. I'm not in love with her, anyway.

Come on, Peter, start making sense. Write down what happened, just the way it happened. You know how to do that, Viola tells me. You've done it before. This is my story; and I must tell it honestly, truthfully or not at all.

What happened is that we found this room. I mean Sunny found it. We left the concrete park and walked up into the Old Town as I'd suggested. I suppose I'd been thinking we'd find an hotel or a guest house to stay in, as we did in Frankland. We very soon found out that Geneva doesn't have accommodation for casual visitors. It seems you can't stay in the city unless you already live there or the authorities have invited you; in which case you use their guest quarters. Of course, we hadn't been invited by anybody. All the time we were finding this out I felt as if we were being stared at by everyone who passed - all those people wearing primary colours and us in dirty, drab clothes.

Once or twice somebody came up to us and addressed us. Sunny spoke to them; saying something along the lines of 'He's been hurt, I'm helping him,' I suppose.

After an hour or more of struggling up and down the steep and narrow streets of the Old Town we were both just about done in. Sunny suggested we find somewhere to stop and have something to eat and drink. Why we hadn't done that to begin with, I don't know. It seems so obvious now. Nobody functions at their best when they're tired, hungry and thirsty.

I kept forgetting that Geneva was a city under siege, so cut off were we from the outside world. Every now and then a distant boom or thud, from an explosion or impact so powerful that it could penetrate the thick shell of concrete that surrounded us, reminded me that we were in a dangerous place. I wondered if we would, in fact, be able to eat. Didn't people who had been besieged for a long time run out of food, like they did in the city of Colmar thirty or more years ago? We kept on searching.

There was an _estaminet_ - the _König_ - on a corner where five streets met. No tables stood outside, more because there was no room for them on the pavement rather than from any fear of rain. It didn't rain in Geneva any more. Nor did it snow, nor did icicles hang from the eaves of the houses in winter. No March or November winds chased fallen leaves along its streets and alleys. Every tree, every bush, every flowerbed was individually, theologically watered by a hosepipe run from the wells deep below the town. The temperature-controlled air hung lifeless on our shoulders, disturbed only by the passage of 'bus, car or tram.

This is a terrible place - a city of dreadful day. There is no real night here. It has been banished by order of the Church. The floodlights burn constantly, powered by the atomcraft stations which throb and rumble in their underground caverns far beneath our feet. We have conquered the sun.

I have drifted from my story. We found the_ estaminet_ as I have said, entered its musty, dark interior and took seats by the door, in case we needed to leave in a hurry. I'll rephrase that; in case Sunny needed to leave in a hurry. I wasn't rushing anywhere. The waiter came slowly over from the bar and asked us what we wanted. Sunny asked for two cups of kaffee and two pastries. She had seen them in the display cabinet and they looked _délicieux_. The waiter looked bemused. Yes, we could have two _tasses_ of kaffee, but why did we want to eat wood? The pastries were for display only.

Sunny laughed. She quickly explained to the waiter that she was only having a joke and that two kaffees and whatever eatables they had to spare would be fine. Eventually, two cups of a very strange-tasting brew arrived, together with some biscuits and a dense, heavy cake, flavoured with ginger. Sunny offered Frankish money in payment, which made the waiter shake his head, return to the bar, take out a notepad and pencil and calculate an exchange rate that would have shocked any respectable banker. She paid anyway.

'_Ersatz_,' said Sunny, when the waiter had left our table. 'Artificial kaffee, but better than nothing.' Indeed it was.

Oh, what a relief it was to be able to sit down and rest; to be able to eat and drink and try to recover our strength. I was still very aware of how outlandish we looked, but sitting behind a corner table we weren't quite as conspicuous as we had been outside.

'What do we do now?' Sunny said, sipping her peculiar, burnt-toast-and-cinnamon-flavoured beverage. 'We still need somewhere to sleep.' Her Alfie preened his whiskers on the table beside her. I had almost forgotten about his disturbing strangeness over the past few days.

'Yes, we definitely have to find somewhere to stay.'

'If it comes to the worst we could look for a hiding-place in a deserted cellar or something. We could even go back to the tunnel, I suppose.' She looked rather doubtful about that prospect.

'No, never. I couldn't stand it. Why don't you ask the waiter if he knows of anywhere we could live?'

'What, tell him we don't belong here? I expect you have to be registered to live in this town. I bet we ought to have papers, and identity cards, and be official members of a congregation and everything.'

'Ask him anyway.'

'Oh, all right. Let me think for a minute.'

Sunny sat with her head in her hands. Her bristly hair poked through her fingertips.

'Hmm... tricky. All right. He's heard us talking, so I can't pretend you've lost your voice. We'll have to say we've come from the Eastern Defences and that you've been wounded, but our home was outside the perimeter so we can't go back there. It's a pretty thin story...'

'Are there any Eastern Defences?'

'I don't know.' Sunny shrugged and stood up. 'I think we're about to find out.'

And so we're here. Sunny spoke to the waiter, and he shook his head and went somewhere behind the scenes and came back out with an old woman who was his mother and who owned the _estaminet_. She walked over to us, and I tried to stand up so I could shake her hand, and I made some odd noises in my throat that might have been an attempt by a badly hurt man to greet her politely, while Sunny told her in Frankish that we were separated from our comrades and needed somewhere to stay for a few nights until we could rejoin our unit. The woman looked curiously at us both, stood with her chin resting in her right hand for a minute or two, conversed with her moth-daemon, Viola says, and finally told Sunny, in Frankish that was too fast for me to follow, that there was an attic we could use, if we didn't mind it being a little dusty.

Sunny smiled at the old woman and thanked her profusely, almost forgetting to keep her voice pitched low. The woman, being enchanted by her smile and perhaps guessing that she was not altogether who or what she seemed, smiled in her turn and led us to the back of the premises. From there a narrow stair went up three floors to this attic bedroom, which is actually much better than we'd been given to expect. I think it was once used by the staff of this place, before the city was closed in and people started to frequent bars and restaurants less often.

It's a nice room, with sloping ceilings, dormer windows overlooking the street outside, a washbasin with running water and two single beds. There are two presses, a double-sided wardrobe made of mahogany and the windows have pull-down blinds which allow us to shut out the precipitate sky that hovers, ever-threatening, outside. We have been very lucky.

I felt bad, leaving Peter and Viola stuck indoors while Alfie and I were out and about in the city. He must have been terribly lonely there. "Indoors" was a silly word to use, of course, as everywhere was indoors here, but I'm sure you know what I mean. I guessed that he must have been used to spending time on his own in his workshop in Oxford, but he'd be working then; concentrating on making or mending things. He'd have been so absorbed in what he was doing that he wouldn't have minded there not being anyone else about. In fact, he probably preferred it that way and was grateful not to be interrupted. Now there was nothing for him to do and he was completely dependent on me.

I had some shopping to do. First things first, and I changed my money at a bank, claiming combatants' rate. Good - we still had enough to live on for a while. The car hire and the room rentals we'd been paying had knocked a big hole in the money I'd brought with me from England, but I didn't think I'd better try to find a branch of Coutts' here to pick up my next instalment of Aunt Sybil's allowance from.

Aunt Sybil... It all came back to me; home, Highdean, Mornington. All of them far, far away. No chance of returning to any of them, or so it seemed to me, stuck as I was in a foreign city under siege with nothing but my knowledge of schoolgirl Frankish between us and arrest by the authorities. I felt momentarily very homesick and lost.

_Sunny..._

_Yes, Alfie?_

_I know we're a long way from home, but..._

_Yes, Alfie?_ I was sure I could feel the salty chill of tear-trails on my cheeks.

_You're not a schoolgirl any more. You're a young woman out in the wide world, making her own way._

_You mean I've got to stop crying? Be brave?_

_You're always brave, Sunny._

_Oh, Alfie!_

I found a pharmacy in a back street not far from the Citadel. The old man who owned the shop looked at me oddly when I asked him for _essence de fleur de pavot en alcool_ but perked up when I tried_ laudanum._

'Ah, pour la douleur?' he asked.

Yes, I told him, my friend had been _blessé_ in the defences and was in great pain. The pharmacist shook his head at that, said that war and fighting were terrible things and gave me a ten-ounce bottle of milky fluid, refusing to take any payment for it. I thanked him with a deep bow.

Next came clothes. Not everybody wore brightly coloured things against the awful flat grey light, I noticed. Clerics, nuns and police officers - and soldiers, of course - wore uniforms of some kind or another. I guessed that we had got away with our style of dress so far because we looked vaguely official. All the same, it would be better if we blended in with the background, so I bought some civilian clothes for Peter (I had to estimate his size) and myself.

Lastly, food. I was afraid there would be a rationing system and I would have to show a carnet of some kind just to be able to get us something to eat. Or, even worse, that food was no longer on general sale. But Alfie reminded me that we had been able to buy kaffee and cakes in the _estaminet_ without having to show our papers, so we kept looking and eventually I found a self-service grocer's shop in the new part of the city, near the old lake. I discovered afterwards that people in work were issued with food parcels as part of their pay, or ate in common refectories.

So, armed with beer, cheese, bread, sausage ("real pork", the label claimed) and a fresh packet of cigarettes, I returned to the _König_, said _bonjour_ to my friend Jean the waiter, and climbed the stairs to our garret.

Sunny returned with her arms full of shopping. I was half asleep on my bed and was startled when she opened the door. I must have said something, or sounded alarmed, for she came straight over to me and put her hand on my forehead. Her warm hand.

'Don't worry Mister... Peter. I've got what you need,' she said and showed me a half-pint bottle of brown-tinted glass. The fluid inside sloshed against the cork. 'Here.' She opened the bottle and poured a little of the laudanum into a spoon. 'How much?' she asked.

'Two dessert spoons,' I replied. She gave me the drug. If it were possible, I felt more ashamed of my addiction then than at any time before, but the relief it brought me - so swift, so certain - from the agony in my left arm and foot was, I thought, worth any disgrace. All the same, I felt that I was abusing her.

'Thank you,' I remembered to say.

'That's all right,' she replied. 'Now, I've got us something to eat. It's not much, but it'll keep us going for a while. First, though, you've got to lie with your face down on the bed. Here; I'll help you.'

'Why?' I asked as she helped me to turn over.

'You'll see.' I lay as she had put me for a couple of minutes, feeling the warmth of the poppy seeping through my body, driving away the pain until it was little more than a memory hiding somewhere in the back of my mind. I had learned not to torture myself with the knowledge that it would, in time, return. That was part of the deal I had made with the drug.

'Now!' said Sunny. 'Turn over!' I levered myself up into a sitting position on the bed. For a moment I looked around blindly. Where was she? And then...

Sunny was standing by one of the dormer windows. The blinds were rolled up, and the light from outside was falling on her from both sides, casting a glow around her shoulders. She had put on a light cotton frock in a print of pink and blue geraniums on a white ground - a summer dress whose skirt flared out over her hips and fell in loose pleats to a simple hem just below her knees. A length of pink ribbon was looped around her waist and tied at the back in a wide bow and at her neck there was a narrow, high-cut collar like a nurse's. The dress's short sleeves ended halfway down her upper arms in a fringe of white lace. She had washed her face in the hand-basin and her colour had risen so that her cheeks glowed from within. Her short dark hair, miraculously, no longer looked like a boy's but like a very young girl's; cut elfin style and accentuating the beauty of her oval face, hazel eyes and soft, mobile mouth.

'What do you think?' she said, and twirled round with her arms outstretched so that her skirts lifted and belled out briefly. 'Will I pass as a girl if I need to? Will I do?' And she smiled at me - a sweet, bewitching smile, like the smile of one who looks upon the stars of Heaven and hears their wild high oratorio.

'Oh, I think so,' I said somehow and smiled back at her, dazed as I was. She rushed over to the bed and leaned over me. She kissed me.

'You should do that more often,' she said. 'You've got a gorgeous smile - did you know that?'

Oh, what a joy it was to be able to wear skirts again! _You are a monster of vanity_, said Alfie, _and a disgraceful show-off_.

_Yes, I admit it and I don't care one little bit! Now let me cut up this bread._

Peter had fallen asleep under the influence of the laudanum. I was glad of it because he needed the rest. I knew that he had suffered terribly during our journey through the tunnel. I also knew that men who had serious injuries needed far more time to recover from them than you might think. They could appear to be perfectly well - over the worst of it, anyway - but inside they were still hurt and often deadly tired. I think that even without the poppy Peter would still have slept, although I couldn't help noticing that he'd been writing in his book while I'd been out. I shut it up without looking at its contents - they were private, after all - and put it down by the side of his bed. Then I tugged the bedclothes out from under him and replaced them on top, pulled his boots off and tucked him into bed as best I could. His Viola crept under the sheets and lay next to him.

I sat on my bed and ate my share of the bread and sausage and drank one of the bottles of beer. Then I stood by the open window and smoked a cigarette. A slight draught caused, I suppose, by an equalisation of air pressure between inside and outside the building, rustled my skirt and I felt once more the pleasure and relief of not having to wear trousers. I'd been in trousers for months and I'd had enough of their stiff practicality. I wanted to feel free again. I hadn't worn a frock since...

_Since the Chelsea Barracks_, said Alfie.

_Yes. Sorry._ I stubbed the ciggie out, pulled off the dress and climbed into bed. I was far too tired to dream.

Lyra and Pantalaimon came to me as I lay in bed, suspended between the drug-trance, sleep and death. She was in my favourite form; middle-aged, wearing a long black skirt, a white blouse and an academic hood in the colours of Jordan College, with her honey-blonde hair clasped behind her head. Her presence infused me with a deep happiness; transcending even the peace that the poppy had brought.

_Hello, Peter._

_Hello, Lyra. I'm glad to see you._

_I'm glad to see _you

We said nothing for a while. I was able to look at her, and that was enough.

_Lyra... Are you here because... because I've died again?_

_No, Peter._

_Am I going to die?_

_You know the answer to that question._

_Yes, of course. I mean; am I going to die soon?_

_What is _soon

_Oh..._

_Don't worry, Peter._

_No. Everything will work out for the best in the end. I know._

_You're still writing your story in your book?_

_Yes._

_Good._ Lyra knelt by the side of the bed and kissed me gently on the lips. Her touch brought back to me with vivid immediacy the memory of the day that she and I had sailed down the river Isis and made love on its banks. I also remembered what had followed closely afterwards.

_Lyra..._

_Yes? _She kissed me again.

I pointed to the bed next to mine, where Sunny lay asleep.

_I betrayed you. That day in Henley, with the Book Lady. Less than three hours after we loved each other I betrayed you. _I was close to tears._ How can I be sure I won't let you or Jane down again?_

Lyra looked at Sunny and smiled. _She's lovely, isn't she? One day, if she lives, I think she will be very beautiful indeed._

_She's a lot like you; did you know that?_

Lyra smiled again._ She's a lot more like herself. Don't get us mixed up, will you?_

_No._

_Sunny has her future and you have yours. I do not think that they are the same future, although your story and hers have come together for a while. Enjoy her beauty, Peter, as you would enjoy a fine painting or an evocative piece of music. Do what you can to help her. Let her help you but don't mistake her affection for love. Think blue and count two._

_I won't abuse her trust, Lyra. Don't worry._

_Good_. Lyra kissed me again and Pan laid a velvet paw on Viola's head. She snuffled in her sleep. I could tell that it was time for them to go.

_Goodbye, Lyra._

_Goodbye, Peter._ She stood up and blew me a last kiss.

_Will I see you again soon_? But she was gone. And what was _soon_?

Peter was better the next day. I gave him the remains of the bread and ran downstairs to ask Jean for some chai. Beer for breakfast seemed wrong, somehow. When he had eaten and drunk I helped Peter to the privy and then suggested that we could go down to the park. 'I think,' I said, 'It's time you told me what's going on, don't you?'

Peter grinned and drank the last dregs of his chai. 'Yes, you're right. I've had a bit of a think and I've decided it's time you knew everything. I should have told you before. I'm sorry.'

'Don't worry about it. Instead, look at this terrific red, green and blue suit I've bought you!'

Peter and I made our way down the steep narrow back stairs and into the street by means of the rear entrance. From there it was only ten minutes' walk to the park. We found a bench right in the middle, where there was nobody close by and where we would easily be able to see if anyone approached us. We sat down and, as Peter seemed unsure what to say at first I started the conversation:

'You told me that the reason the Horde are trying to conquer Geneva is that the Magisterium won't let them have access to the Holy Word. That's why there's all this war and killing and why we're surrounded by their forces now.'

'Yes.'

'So why doesn't the Church do to them what they did to us? Why don't they bring down another lightning strike?'

'It's too narrow, that beam. It would only kill a few hundred men - a thousand at the most. It's not designed for killing people but for destroying buildings and ships. The other reason is that it takes a long time to recharge. In fact, sometimes it destroys itself when it's fired, like a cannon bursting.'

'You still haven't told me why it was aimed at us.'

'I think the Church was using its alethiometers just as I was using mine - to find out where its greatest danger lay.'

'And we're its greatest danger?'

'We may well be.'

'Hmmm. I never knew I was so important!'

_Sunny, _chided Alfie. _I've never known a time when you didn't think you were the most important thing in the world..._

'Arthur thinks you are.'

'Oh yes. Tell me about Arthur.'

Peter shook his head. 'I'm worried about him. We should have heard from him by now.'

'He was all the men and boys I met along the way, wasn't he? Even that Colonel Braeburn?'

'Yes.'

'He was going to meet us by the dock, he said.'

'Yes he did, but there is no dock here. The lake's been filled in. I don't know why he didn't know that.'

'Oh. So does that mean we don't know what we're going to do?'

'No, I know exactly what we're going to _try_ to do. But we've got to do it without Arthur's help.'

I asked Peter about Arthur. He explained that the Arthurs I had seen had been _time-ghosts_. That wasn't a word I knew. It seemed that, despite appearances, there was more than one of everybody and that all these different everybodies occupied different parallel time-streams. 'Some people,' said Peter, 'can leap from one time-stream to another and appear as ghosts of themselves in worlds where they don't belong.'

'So the boy I saw on the Pompey Docks was a younger version of Arthur?'

'That's right. But there's another way of looking at it, and that is that he was a manifestation of the self, or _Ka_, of he who occupies the greater stream in which all the time-streams flow. That _Ka_ can influence all the other selves.'

'They're like puppets, you mean?'

'Not quite, but sort of. Just to make it even more complicated, you can also think of the Arthurs you saw as being Dust-spirits, made of raw human consciousness, like the angels are.'

'Dust? Angels?' That led to a lot more explanation. It was funny - Peter explained everything very clearly and I'm not dim so I had no trouble following what he told me. I was even able to make some good guesses based on what he said, which pleased him. Like:

'So these Dust-spirits or time-ghosts - they're not physical beings?'

'No, they're metaphysical, just like the angels.'

'So they're not physically strong? You could fight one and it wouldn't be able to hurt you?'

'Not unless you were very unfortunate.'

'I see. Go on, then.'

Peter went on, but it was all so outlandish and none of it corresponded to anything I had learned at school. It was more like a story - a really good, inventive story - that somebody had made up. I couldn't make it real in my mind.

'All right,' I said eventually. 'I'll take it as read that Arthur is some kind of magic man. I expect his magic doesn't work here.' I pointed up to the dome through the branches of the anbarically-watered tree that sheltered our bench. 'But how are we going to stop the war?'

It was all down to information, Peter said. The Horde had surrounded the Holy City because they wanted the information that was treasured there. The Magisterium didn't want them to have it.

'But why should they have it?' I said. 'It's not theirs. The Holy Spirit didn't reveal it to them.'

'That's not altogether true. There are some very clever theologians in Africa and Hindustan. But there's another thing to consider. If I have two coins and I give you one of them I've only got half the money I had before. But if I have a piece of knowledge and I give it to you, then we both have it. I've lost nothing and you've gained everything. Knowledge - the Word - wants to be set free.'

'Why don't we wait until our armies drive the Horde back and liberate the City? They'll be here soon. Then we can give the Word to everybody.' Just to reinforce my point there was a boom from overhead. A rocket must have exploded outside.

Peter shook his head again. 'Do you think we would? After losing so many good men in battle, would we give the Enemy what they'd been fighting for once we'd defeated them? Would you?'

'No... I don't think we would.' Not after they'd killed Gerry.

'Sunny,' Peter turned to face me with a quick grimace of pain and leaned forward. 'I know what you're thinking. Your brother died in this war. But look at it this way. Suppose we give the Word to the Africs and the Hindus. Suppose the City no longer has exclusive ownership of all knowledge. Wouldn't that end the war? Wouldn't that save more young men from being killed?'

_Don't forget his son Danny's in the army_, said Alfie.

'Let me think.' I stood up and walked a short distance from the bench. So was Peter only trying to save his own son? And why had he told me all those fairy-tales about angels and Dust and ghosts? How convincing was that? Not very, was the answer. And then, wouldn't I be a traitor if I gave the Holy Word to the Enemy, even supposing such a thing were possible? How many books did the Word fill? How would I be able to get them out of the city? How would I carry them? Or was I supposed to open a gate or a tunnel like the one Peter and I had come in by and let the Horde in? Wouldn't there be a dreadful slaughter in the streets of Geneva if I did that?

_Oh Alfie, this is impossible. No wonder he didn't tell me any of this before now. I'd have dumped him in Frankland days ago and Jacques Fourneaux would still be alive._

_There have been many deaths. Too many. We could stop them if we gave the Enemy the Word._

_Would they stop? The Enemy might take the Word from us and carry on fighting anyway._

_They know they'd lose. They're falling back as it is. You know our forces are winning._

_That's true._

_But... There'd be more fighting and more killing. More horribly injured men and women. The only chance we've got of stopping them is if the Word is set free and everybody knows about it. If there's nothing left to fight for then maybe, just maybe, the fighting will stop._

I stood absolutely still for several minutes. _All right, Alfie. I'm only half convinced, but I can't think of anything better to do. We'll go along with Arthur's and Peter's plans, whatever they are._

I turned around and returned to the bench, carrying Alfie in my arms. Peter was sitting where I had left him, stroking his Viola's back. 'Right,' I said. 'Any idea where they keep the library in this town?'

Of course I didn't mean a public library, like the ones you borrow books from at home. It seemed most likely to Peter and me that the Word would be kept well guarded in a private store. 'But,' he said, 'There's bound to be more than one copy of it and it's probably kept in more than one place. The other thing is that, although it may be written down in books it's probably also stored anbarically.'

I didn't understand what he meant so he showed me some of the things in his knapsack. There was a little black box, labelled _Sony_ in faded letters. It was anbaric, he said, and he tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. Was it full of delicate parts? I asked. Yes, Peter replied and you could see that he instantly realised what I'd already guessed - that the lightning which had damaged the alethiometer and his watch had also done for this _Sony_ box. He looked terribly sick about that.

'I do wish I hadn't brought it with me. Jane loved this little player.' He explained that a friend from a different time-stream, or _world_, had given him the _Sony_, and that it was full of music and kinos and books. 'But they're all lost now. Lost to this world, apart from the tunes Arthur learned from it. Oh Sunny, there were such kinos in it, like you wouldn't believe. Magical things...'

There was also a little book I'd seen him reading and I asked to borrow it. This book also came from another world, and the stories in it were strange beyond all my imagining. Strange, and haunting, and _alien_. I think that it was reading those stories, and feeling the odd texture of the paper under my fingers and smelling the unusual odour of the book's pages that put me on the path of believing in the truth of what Peter had told me in the park.

During the next few days I explored the city, looking for the Word. I moved among the people of Geneva, speaking little and listening as much as I could. Most of them spoke Frankish, though I heard a little Swiss-Doytch as well. I couldn't understand that at all, but as the days passed and I became, so far as I could, part of the life of the town, I picked up more and more of what was going on.

It was amazing how little the war and the siege affected the life of the common people. I should have worked this out for myself, I suppose. After all, life carried on pretty much as usual in London, despite the Zeppelin raids and the blackouts, and Geneva had been living under its concrete roof for nearly ten years. War and peace were much the same beneath it. People still had to eat and work and go home in the evening. As I wandered up and down the alleyways and boulevards of the town, looking for a public street-map, browsing in the bookshops, drinking kaffee and chai in the public bars and restaurants, it was the sense of orderliness and business as usual that struck me the most strongly.

Around eight o'clock every night the city authorities turned two-thirds of the dome's floodlights off and covered the remaining ones with blue filters, casting the city into semi-darkness. I returned to our attic then with things for Peter and me to eat and drink. Sometimes he would be asleep, whether from tiredness or the effects of the opium I didn't know. But often he would be awake and alert and we would share out the bread and meat and kaffee I brought. Once, as a special treat, I spent most of the day's allowance on two real apples. They tasted wonderfully real after the artificial reconstituted stuff that was all that the ordinary folk of Geneva usually ate.

After eating we would lie on our beds with the lights out. The dim, purple-tinged glow from outside gave just enough light for us to see by. If only we could have looked out and seen the stars... Those were the times we talked. We told each other about our lives in the real world beyond the city. Peter talked about Oxford, and his wife and sons, and about the business of making and selling clocks and instruments. He told me about the day he gained his Mastership, with the demonstration of a gravity-driven clock he had made. It had taken him two years to design and build, he said, and was accurate to within a second a month. I talked about home, and school and the Ambulance Brigade.

As the days passed, Peter and I grew closer and we began to feel that we could tell each other our secrets. One night I asked him to tell me about the professor he had known in Oxford and who had taught him to read the alethiometer. He'd had a natural talent for it, he said, and went on to tell me about the first time he met Professor Belacqua on a cold winter's day, and how he'd fallen hopelessly in love with her, despite the thirty years' difference in their ages.

'And did she love you?' I asked.

'She could never show it. Not until...' And then Peter told me his story; about how he had died and been brought back to life in the wrong universe and then been separated from his Viola (I gasped in horror) and met Lyra, who had died in his world but still lived in another. And how, when he died again, he had met Lyra for the third time in a world that was beyond time and they had finally confessed their love for one another.. Peter hesitated then. 'I can't tell you everything that happened after that. Not even now. But I chose to return to my world, knowing that I ran the risk of being very badly hurt. Which, as you can see, is what happened.'

And so, echoing his reticence, I never told Peter about Alfie's _specialness_ and in the end we never revealed our very deepest secrets to each other. I am sure that, had we done so, we would have become lovers.

I feel completely, utterly useless. Neither of us has said it out loud, but somehow it's become accepted that we have a much better chance of finding the Word if I stay up here in the attic bedroom of the _König _and Sunny investigates in the city. I hate this. It's horribly dangerous. She only has to ask the wrong question of the wrong person and she's likely to be arrested. If that happens, the prediction I made on the _Marie-Louise_ that she might have to face torture will suddenly become very, very real. There are places deep below the Citadel where the white-tiled rooms in which the Consistory Court of Discipline once performed its _autos-da-fé_ still exist, I am quite sure. She's going out and about dressed as a girl, so she's not even got her sword with her. She's quite defenceless.

I made the most discreet enquiries I could, I am sure. Too bloody discreet, really, because after three days of searching I was getting no closer to the truth. It was on the fourth day, with the pounding from overhead becoming louder and more insistent - our armies were getting closer and our time was running out - that I or, rather, Alfie had a brainwave.

'Suppose,' he said out aloud as we sat on my bed in the attic eating artificially sweetened flapjacks. 'Suppose you were a theologian of the Magisterium and you had custody of the Word. Let's also suppose that the Word is portable - that it's kept in an anbaric box like the Sony. What would you do if the City were invaded by hostile forces?'

'I'd try to hide it, I suppose,' I said.

'Yes, you might,' said Peter. 'But you might want to do something else.'

'You might try to get away with it. Escape,' said Viola. Her voice was light and lilting.

'That's right,' said Alfie. 'And if you were going to try to escape, what route would you use?'

'A tunnel, like the one we used to get here?'

'Give the squirrel a coconut! Yes, there are probably a fair number of escape tunnels, leading out of the city in all directions. Now, if you wanted to be sure of getting hold of a copy of the Word before you made your escape - bearing in mind that the streets of Geneva might well be full of foreigners waving cudgels and guns and looking with fell intent for theologians and priests - where would you keep it?'

'Near the tunnel!' Peter said.

'For example, in the building whose cellar led to the tunnel. The one we originally entered the city by.'

I looked around us. 'What you're saying, smartarse daemon, is that we've spent the last four or five days looking for something that we probably missed by only a few yards when we first came to the city?'

'Yes, more or less.'

'Well, you could have said so a little earlier!'

The next day, Peter and I gathered together our things and said goodbye to the _König. _I let Jean kiss me on the cheek and squeeze my waist even though I was once more dressed as a boy. I hadn't fooled him for a minute, of course. 'Libération!' I said to his mother and him as we left. We made our way back down the streets of Geneva as carefully as we could. This time we were properly prepared for the rigours of the tunnel. Peter's knapsack was stuffed with matches, candles, food and water and I was wearing my sword.

Our plan was terribly simple. We would locate a copy of the Word in an easily carried anbaric form, if such a thing existed. We would steal that copy somehow and scarper into the tunnel, making sure to block the way behind us; either by lowering the iron bulkheads which we knew were there or, if necessary, by fighting and killing anyone who tried to follow us.

It was a simple plan, as I have said. Too simple, really. But when all is said and done nothing could have prepared us for what we were to find in the building at the tunnel's end.

* * *

_Author's note_

When this tale is finally finished I'll append to it another of the stories from _The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky_.


	22. The Citadel

_The Citadel_

_There must be some way out of here,  
Said the joker to the thief,  
There's too much confusion,  
I can't get no relief._

Bob Dylan

'Front door or back?' Peter asked. We were standing on the verge of the Quai Des Bergues looking up the narrow street through which we had entered Geneva four days earlier. I was wearing my floral dress and Peter was in his colourful suit.

I thought. If we went in through the back door and met somebody in the corridors we'd be automatically treated as intruders. But if we entered by the front door there'd be bound to be somebody on a desk who would ask us our business. Now if only I were a witch, I'd have been able to send Alfie into the building and he'd have been able to spy out the land on my behalf.

Spy out the land... Right.

'Stay here,' I said to Peter. 'I'm just going to pop in and see what I can find. Have a look around. Could you lend me your notebook?'

He looked surprised, but opened his knapsack, got the book out and gave it to me. I took it from him and put it under my left arm, together with my papers and my own book. 'See you in a minute or two,' I said.

I walked up the street, ascended the steps and tried the door handle. Good, it was unlocked. This entrance was almost certainly used by the people who worked in the building. I walked in, trying to look as this was what I did every day of the week. I didn't look back as I let the street door close silently behind me. As I remembered, there was a corridor beyond which led deep into the heart of the building. What I hadn't remembered, because he hadn't been there before, was the armed sentry who stood in front of the door which led to the cellar room. That changed things. Oh well, I couldn't just stand there. I gathered up the papers I was carrying in one hand and offered the crook of my elbow to Alfie. Looking straight ahead I strode down the corridor, hoping that I wouldn't be challenged and trying to make up a story that would cover me if I were. As I passed the sentry I gave him a quick _bonjour_. He stiffened his already rigid stance and grasped his halberd even more firmly. His eyes never moved.

At the far end of the corridor there was, as I'd hoped, a staircase on the right hand side just before a pair of wooden swing doors. It went both upstairs and downstairs; light above and dark below. I climbed up it until I reached the first floor and had a look around the landing. As I'd expected, this floor was laid out exactly the same as the ground floor except that there were many more doors. Each door carried a brass nameplate. I strolled to the end of the corridor, noting that its linoleum floor was slightly damp as if it had been washed recently. Then I returned to the staircase, walked down it again, turned right at the bottom and passed through the swing doors. Beyond them was a large hallway with, as I had expected, a reception desk to one side. At the far end a set of glass doors lead out to the street. Good. That was all I needed. I stepped out, with all the self-confidence I could muster, across the hall. Half-way across, I turned and faced the reception desk. A young man was sitting at it, dressed in a uniform of green serge and wearing a peaked cap. I called out to him that I would only be gone for five minutes and left the building by the glass doors. A wide set of steps led down to street level. Over the doors was a sign, which read _Ministère de l'Emploi_. Splendid.

I followed the street until it joined with the Quai des Bergues. Then I turned left and walked until I reached the narrow street which led to the back of the building. Peter was standing about twenty yards down from the steps, looking worried. 'Mister Parry!' I called out.

'Sam!' He sounded pleased and relieved to see me and when Alfie and I reached him he threw his right arm around me and gave me a hug. I let him hold me - I needed his support as much as he needed mine. I was shaking all over.

'Right,' I said after a minute or two. 'I can get us in. Are you still sure you want to come with me?'

'You mean, will I get in the way?'

'No, Peter.' I pecked him on the cheek. 'I don't mean that. We're both in this together. I won't leave you behind.'

He looked me in the eyes. 'No. I don't believe you will.'

I kissed him again. 'Good. Anyway, I need you. Now, here's what we're going to do...'

- 0 -

My uniform was rolled up and stored in Peter's knapsack. He wore the sword, hanging loosely from his belt. If I needed it, I would take it from him. I hoped I wouldn't need it. We walked as quickly as we could without drawing attention to ourselves. Peter refused to let me help him in the street, but I held his right hand as we climbed the steps at the front of the building and I opened the door for him. We crossed the hallway, Peter's stump going bang-bang-bang on the marble floor. The guard on the desk looked up as we approached. He recognised me, just as I intended.

'Pour Monsieur Delacroix,' I said. 'Deuxième étage.'

The guard looked up at me. 'Vous attend-il?'

Yes, I told him, we were expected. The gentleman with me was going to see him for a consultation. There was no need to call Monsieur Delacroix as we were expected. Thank you, you're very kind. We'll go on through.

I helped Peter through the swing doors and we climbed the stairs to the first floor and entered the corridor. As I had hoped, all the office doors were still closed. It was a quiet morning, perhaps because our forces were now so close that everyone had left their rooms and gone to see what was happening. We walked down the corridor as quietly as we could, just the same, passing E.A. Delacroix's office on the left, according to the nameplate on its door. At the end was a smaller door without a plate. I tried the handle. It was locked. Good.

'Right, Mister Clockmaker. Give me that knapsack.' Peter handed it over to me and I rummaged around in it. I found his tool-roll, untied the strings that held it closed and gave it to him. 'I'm going to bet,' I said with a smile, 'that you can pick that door's lock in, oh, thirty seconds.'

'Twenty,' said Peter, and gave me another of his unexpectedly gorgeous grins.

It took him over a minute, actually. I was tempted to turn round and keep an eye open for people coming up the stairs, but that would have looked more than a little suspicious so I settled for pinning back my ears and listening hard. I don't actually know what we'd have done if we had been discovered. Anyway, the lock opened with a click and Peter and I let ourselves into the storeroom beyond. As I had hoped, it was unoccupied, except for a pair of metal cupboards, some mops and brooms and a bucket or two. It smelled musty and close, but there was a window set high in the end wall so we had some light.

'Right,' I said. 'All we have to do now is sit tight.' What I was planning on was this: Even though Geneva was a city under siege I knew that, just like in London, people who worked in everyday administrative jobs would keep to their familiar everyday routines as much as they possibly could. The civil servants who worked in the Department of Employment in Geneva would be exactly like their counterparts in London.

Peter and I sat down on the floor. I was pretty sure we wouldn't be disturbed. The corridor outside had been mopped - I checked the mop; it was damp and evil-smelling. Hadn't they heard of bleach? That was what we used when we cleaned the floors in Mornington. So the cleaners had finished with this floor and they had locked away their tools for the day. I checked my watch. It was nine o'clock. If the workers here were like the ones in London, they'd have a one-hour lunch break between twelve o'clock and one. That would be the most dangerous time, but also the one with the most opportunities for taking a break; mixed up with the crowd as we would be.

- 0 -

Peter and I sat and sat and sat. If we had been in a room in a building in the real world outside, we'd have seen a square of sunlight from the window move across the wall as the day passed. But this world was not real and neither was its light. So we sat and dozed and chatted. About everything, really. Peter told me all about his home in Tring when he was a boy, and his apprenticeship at James and James, and meeting Lyra and losing Lyra and marrying Jane and his two sons, Daniel and George. About how the business grew and grew and they now lived in a big new house in north Oxford with a maid and a cook and lawns running down to the Cherwell and a boathouse with a punt and a skiff and a motor-launch.

I told him about home and my attic room and about Aunt Sybil. I told him the story that Daddy had told me about the day he met Mummy in Lisbon and how their eyes had met across the dinner table at the Ambassador's Residence. I talked about Highdean and Mornington, and the holidays we'd had in Argyll and Cambria and the Isle de Serque. 'I've love to visit the Disunited States one day,' I said, being careful to keep my voice down.

After that I borrowed Peter's book again and read the rest of the stories in it. Then I slept for a while and woke up with a crick in my neck. Peter had shifted position and was resting against one of the cupboards with his eyes closed. I knew without Alfie having to tell me that he had taken a dose of laudanum and for the first time in ages I was angry with him. It was so unfair, drifting off into poppyland and leaving me by myself. So I lay, half-awake and half-asleep, sometimes disturbed by the voices in the hallway outside, sometimes not.

- 0 -

After approximately ten thousand years of sitting on the floor of the Department of Employment I was startled into wakefulness by a a change in the colour of the light. At last! It was eight o'clock and the floodlights had been turned down. It was night-time in Geneva. I got to my feet with a groan of aching legs and shook Peter's shoulder, hoping that he wouldn't be too doped-up to respond. His eyes blinked open and, with my help, he staggered to his feet.

'This is it, I said. 'Let's go and see if we can find the Word.'

'You still think it'll be here?' Peter's speech was slightly slurred.

'Yes. I doubt if it'll be in any of these offices, though. I don't suppose the officials of the Department of Employment know anything about it.'

'Even assuming Alfie's guess turns out to be right.'

'Even so. Anyway, I think it'll be in a ground-floor room. Imagine you're a Cardinal or perhaps even the Blessed Pierre Leroque himself, and you're running for your life. You dash down the hill from the Citadel and you come to this place. You're on your way to the tunnel. You're not going to go running up and down the stairs, are you? You're going to want to pick it up on your way. So let's try to follow the path he'd take.'

'And keep a look out for night-watchmen and guards.'

'Absolutely yes.'

So, keeping a look out for night-watchmen and guards, we left the store room and crept back down the corridor to the staircase. Once we reached the ground floor I held a finger to my lips and looked around the corner to the back door. Would the sentry still be there? The answer seemed to be no, so far as I could see in the darkness. That was good. I didn't stop to wonder why the sentry had left his post but he would hardly be standing there with the lights off, would he?

Which way would a fleeing priest come? Front door, or back? _Front_, said Alfie, and I agreed with him. I beckoned to Peter and slowly opened the swing doors which led to the entrance lobby. Was there anyone on the desk? No, and that was good too. I decided that the building had been completely deserted and everybody there, whether day or night workers, had gone to the western side of the dome, awaiting the breaking of the siege by our troops and the liberation of the city. A loud thump from overhead confirmed me in my belief.

I was made somewhat uneasy by the fact that the lobby was more or less open to the street, because of its glass doors. We would not be able to risk turning the lights on. Never mind, there was enough light to see by. 'Now,' I said, 'you're in a hurry. You run up the steps, you throw open the door. You run into this lobby. You're on your way though those swing doors and you want to collect a copy of the Word. Where do you get it from? Who has it?'

'Easy!' said Alfie.

Peter frowned. 'Is it?' Viola's ears pricked forward.

'Yes, it is' she said, and pointed to the desk. 'The guard has it. He hands it over to the Cardinal or whoever it is.'

'Got it,' said Alfie. 'Score another one for daemonkind!'

'So the Word is kept in a drawer in this desk. Let's have a look.'

Of course we had no idea of what we were looking for. The desk was big and solid, made of granite or marble or something like that and we quickly discovered that it wasn't fitted with drawers of any kind.

'All right', I said. Not here. But...' I pointed to the wall behind the desk. It was made of the same polished stone that covered the floor and up against it stood a pair of wooden cabinets with glass doors. They contained all kinds of stuff - books, directories, photograms, trophies, glass paperweights, models of Zeppelins and rockets and gyropters. A poster on the wall between the cabinets showed a happy, determined-looking man wearing blue overalls and holding a riveting hammer. Behind him was a ship in the course of construction and across the top of the poster, in large black letters, were the words _Le Travail Libère. _

None of these things looked very much like the Word of God.

'Oh,' I said, disappointed. It looked as if we had spent the whole day cooped up in a smelly room for nothing. 'Sod it. Let's go home. I'm fed up.'

'Wait a minute. What about looking _behind_ the poster?' said Peter. 'There could be a safe hidden there.'

'All right,' I said. 'We might as well, now we're here.'

We lifted the poster and its frame away from the wall. And yes! There was a block of stone which had wider gaps around it than the rest of the wall and a keyhole set into it. I clapped my hand across Peter's shoulder. Gently, of course. 'Open Sesame!' I said.

It took Peter rather longer to open this lock than the other. In fact it took nearly an hour and I have to say that I would have given up after the first ten minutes. But, with a sigh of satisfaction from Viola, Peter eventually stood up, slipped a screwdriver into the keyhole and used it as a lever to open the safe door. We leaned forward and looked inside, our hearts beating fast with anticipation. It was completely, laughably empty.

_Damn, damn, damn._ 'That's it then,' I said. 'Let's go back.' And I turned to do so, intending to go back through the swing doors and either leave the building by the back entrance or head for the tunnel and safety. But as I turned a little flicker of red light caught my eye. It came from the right-hand cabinet and I supposed it was a reflection from its glass door. But wait - the light outside was blue not red. I approached the cabinet more closely. Nothing... yes. Another red flash. I turned to Peter. 'Look at this...'

It was one of the glass paperweights. From a distance of more than a yard or so, and in normal light, it would have looked exactly like an ordinary piece of glass. But in the dark, and up close, you could see... what? A point of red light that pulsed once a second and dim green lines that chased themselves around inside the glass. A structure - like a city made of spectral blue light, and the moving green lines were its streets and people. The glass crystal was _alive_.

'That's it,' I said, full of a great illuminating certainty. 'That's it! It must be. Let's grab it and skedaddle.' I opened the cabinet door. That was easy; it wasn't locked. I put my hand in and lifted the paperweight, which was oddly light. 'Okay! Let's go!'

But as I turned to put the paperweight in my pocket, every light in the lobby came on simultaneously, blinding Peter and me. At the same time, men armed with crossbows pushed open the street doors, stepped through and pointed their weapons at us. The swing doors banged as more men thrust them back against their hinges and stood behind us. A man - an officer - stepped forward. He spoke, and his voice was high in pitch but perfectly accented. He addressed us in English.

'You will put that object carefully on the desk. You will drop all your possessions and stand perfectly still with your hands in the air. You will come with me and you will attempt no resistance. You will obey my orders immediately and without hesitation, or I will have you killed.'

- 0 -

Peter and I were separated as soon as we reached the Citadel. My watch was taken from me. Alfie and I were taken to a small cell and locked inside. It was equipped with a plank bed, one blanket and a bucket. I supposed that Peter had been taken to another identical cell. I called out, 'Peter, Peter!' but there was no reply, not even from the policemen who had, with perfect courtesy and an implacable firm grip, conducted me there.

I was left in the cell for an indeterminate length of time. I was forced to use the bucket, which had no cover. A tube set in the ceiling of the cell shed a steady grey light, like the glow of the dome outside. I had no idea of where we were, only that we had been taken up the hill in a windowless van and that we had gone down more steps than we had gone up after entering the fortress which lay at the heart of the city of Geneva.

I slept fitfully. The cell was neither hot nor cold, but the bed was hard. While I slept the bucket was replaced and food - artificial food such as Peter and I had eaten in our attic - left on a tray. There was a water-jug in the corner of the cell, made of some unbreakable material. I was given no eating utensils. I had nothing but the shoes and clothes I was wearing. The walls of the cell were made of grey metal and there was no window. I felt as if I had been buried alive.

Alfie had the idea that I should pretend to sleep and, when the tray was next taken, use the water-jug as a weapon and make my escape. _To where_? I asked him. _We don't know the way out of here_.

- 0 -

After the tray and the bucket had been taken and replaced three times, two green-uniformed men came to the cell door and opened it. They led me voicelessly up six flights of stone stairs to a room which was equipped with a table, two chairs and a light-tube.

On the table rested a cage, made of a shimmering silvery metal that I did not recognise.

One of the men motioned to me to sit down. I followed his order and sat with Alfie held in my lap. I wanted the bucket again. The men left. I heard a key turn in the lock.

After five minutes the door behind me opened again and a tall, thin man with a hound-daemon walked in. He held a clipboard with a pencil hanging from it on a piece of string. He sat down opposite me.

'Your papers state that you are Driver Moon of the Brytish Ambulance Brigade, and that your service number is 040216.'

'040261,' I corrected him.

'Thank you,' he said in his colourless voice, and made a note on his clipboard. He raised his hand and lifted a trapdoor in the top of the cage. I felt a twinge of alarm. 'Would you put your daemon in this box, please?'

'What?'

'It is necessary for the proper conduct of this interview that your daemon be put under restraint. You will place him in the box, please. I take it that you are not a witch?'

'No...no.'

'That is good. We would not want you to fly away from us, would we? Now,' and his voice took on an edge like a cleaver's, 'if you do not put your daemon in the box by yourself right now, I will have a man come in who will take him from you as gently as he can and put him in the box for you. Is that what you would prefer?'

A man? A strange man? Handle my Alfie? My throat went tight, as if I were throttling myself, or being strangled with a cord. Alfie squealed in panic.

'No!' I gasped. 'Not that!' And feeling like a traitor I took Alfie and lowered him into the box. The man slid a bolt across the trapdoor and turned a knob on the side of the cage.

'There! He's perfectly safe, and only I know the combination which will release him. Now we can relax and have a nice, friendly conversation.'

I was seething with a mixture of fright and indignation. 'Where's Peter? Where have you taken him?'

'Ah, so his name is Peter, is it?' The interrogator made another note. 'You may rest assured, Driver Moon, that he is being looked after every bit as well as we are looking after you. Now then,' he leaned forward, 'why are you here?'

'Because you brought me here?'

'That was a clever answer, but the wrong one.' The man stabbed his pencil into the cage and Alfie screamed with pain. So did I, over and over again.

The interrogator smiled without showing his teeth. 'I think we understand each other now.' His eyes were as colourless as his voice and his clipped hair a pale shade of brown. 'Tell me who you are and why you are here.'

I took a deep breath to calm myself. 'My full name is Sonya Clarice Moon. I am a driver in the Brytish Ambulance Brigade. My service number is 040261. I am not required under the Articles Of War to furnish you with any more information than that.'

'Why are you here?'

'I do not have to tell you that, but I will tell you this. My father is Captain Sir Ronald Moon. He is a King's Minister in the Brytish Government. Brytain is an ally of the Holy City of Geneva. Brytish men and women are fighting and dying to liberate this city from the Pagan Horde.'

'I know that. Why are you here?'

'Aren't you listening to me? We are allies. We are both fighting on the same side.'

'You are a spy. You were discovered in clandestine operations by the security forces of the City of Geneva. What were you doing? Why have you been hiding in the city? What were you looking for in the Department of Employment? Were you planting a bomb? Who or what was your target? Why were you carrying a weapon? What was the function of the cripple who was accompanying you? You will answer all these questions promptly and truthfully.' He jabbed the pencil into Alfie's cage again. Darkness followed.

_Sunny. Don't answer him. It doesn't matter. I'm all right. He can't really hurt me._

_Oh Alfie. You're so brave._

_Am I?_

I waited until my breathing had become more or less normal. Then I picked myself up from the floor and sat in the chair, facing my tormentor.

'You filthy little man. Don't you see how much trouble you are in? Do you realise what will happen to you when my father learns how you have been treating me? Soon the Brytish army will break through the last of the Pagan defences. Soon this city will be free. Soon I will be free. What do you want me to tell the liberators? What shall I tell my father?' I drew a deep breath and looked the interrogator bang in the eyes. 'I demand, as is my right as a Brytish subject, immediate access to the Brytish Consul. You will arrange this. It is my absolute right.'

_Well done, Sunny! You tell the bastard!_

The interrogator smiled mirthlessly. 'You are a spy. You have no rights.'

- 0 -

They took me back to my cell. My cell, I say, but it could have been another, identical one. It was impossible to tell. I wondered what was happening to Peter. I felt guilty about betraying his name, although Alfie comforted me by saying that it was not a secret and that Peter had probably told his interviewer about me.

The light went on and off at irregular intervals. When it was dim I tried to sleep, but it quite often came back on again not long after I had dropped off, waking me up. The walls of the cell seemed to tremble with a deep vibration which I found very unsettling.

Time passed. There was a period when the light flickered continuously, making red patterns behind my eyes. I wanted to scream, but Alfie came and put his paws over my face, protecting me. After that, I slept with his body lying across my eyes and it was better for a while until the metal walls started to shake and boom as if men were striking them from outside with mallets.

Twice more, I was taken up the interrogation room for questioning. I refused to put Alfie in the cage again but he, rather than suffer a mauling at the hands of the interviewer, climbed in by himself. The pale man smiled at that. I found that it was best if I put no thought into my answers, but simply gave the same response each time:

'I am Sonya Clarice Moon, 040261, Brytish Ambulance Brigade, and I demand to see the Brytish Consul immediately.'

The interrogator tried to trip me into contradicting myself. He offered to release me if I would answer his questions. He threatened to torture me to death if I did not answer them. He told me that Peter had confessed everything already, so why was I holding back? Why didn't I make it easy on myself and tell him everything I knew? To all these questions I gave the same reply and eventually he gave up and had me taken back down to the cell. It felt like a little victory every time.

- 0 -

I was lying on my bed. Food and water had been brought to me, but the bucket had been removed. I knew that a time would come when I would have to relieve myself without it, but for now I settled for refusing to eat or drink. I couldn't remember when I had last slept for more than five minutes at a time.

_Next time_, said Alfie, _I will Change before you can put me in the cage. I will kill that man with my bare hands._

_No, don't. Remember Chelsea._

_But if they try to touch you, I will do it. I will give them our life, rather than see you violated. Is it a deal?_

I shivered. _Yes, Alfie. It's a deal._

- 0 -

They came and took me up for the fourth time. I was unsteady, tired, hungry and thirsty but I had not disgraced myself in the cell. I had kept that much of my self-respect. The interrogator looked up from his clipboard as I was led in. Alfie got ready to get into the cage, but the man held his hand up.

'No need for that.' He smiled. 'I have good news for you, Driver Moon. I have put your request to the authorities and they have responded favourably.'

'What request?' I said stupidly.

'Why, that you be granted access to the Brytish Consul. You will be taken to see him as soon as possible. Someone from the Consulate has been sent for and is on his way here now.'

'Oh. Good. About time too.'

_Be careful_, said Alfie. _It could be a trap_.

'I do hope,' the interrogator said, leaning forward and linking his hands together on top of the desk, 'that you will give a favourable report of our, ah, _humane_ methods to the Consul. You are, after all, physically untouched and have been offered adequate food, water and shelter.'

'Go to hell,' I replied. The interrogator shrugged.

There was a knock on the door - a loud, insistent knock - and a man flung it back and burst into the room. I turned in my seat to look at him. He was a young man, well-built with a sun-browned face - a rare sight in this dark underworld of a city. I stood up unsteadily. His face went blank with amazement.

'Sunny! Sunny!' he said, and his voice was instantly, overwhelmingly familiar. 'Sunny! It's really you! I didn't believe it! What on earth are you doing in Geneva? Oh, come here, my darling!'

I tried to move, but my heart wasn't working right and my legs had no strength left in them. I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn't find the breath. I grabbed hold of the back of the chair, but it tipped over and I fell to the floor, with the blood buzzing in my skull and my eyes blurring over in a wash of grey.

Consciousness left me and I fainted, but as the room faded from my sight I heard Alfie speak, out aloud for everyone to hear, and his voice was full of the very same joy and astonishment that I was too dizzied to express myself. I heard him say just one word as darkness took me, and it was the same word that was echoing in my brain:

'Gerry!'


	23. The Brothers

_The Brothers_

_Then she became a turtle dove,  
To fly up in the air,  
And he became another dove,  
And they flew pair and pair._

Traditional

_Gerry_. My brother Gerry. Geegee to his school friends. Lieutenant Moon, Royal Navy, whose ship had been sunk in the German Ocean. Gerry and Eugénie, his lovely meerkat-daemon.

Gerry alive. Alive after all. Here in Geneva. Alive and well. _Oh Daddy,_ I thought._ Wait until I tell you about this!_

- 0 -

They helped me back onto the chair and I put my head in my lap and held Alfie until the buzzing in my ears calmed down. I was ashamed of having fainted, which was silly as I'd had nothing to eat or drink for hours. What a schoolgirly thing to have done, all the same, and I didn't want to behave like a schoolgirl. I wanted Gerry to... see me differently. I don't know - I was so confused. I'd never known how happy I could feel. I never knew that happiness could be so physical. I wasn't in control of myself - not my body, not my mind. Certainly not of Alfie who was running around madly chasing his tail. Gerry sat on the edge of the table and took my hands in his.

'Oh Sunny, it's so wonderful to see you. I thought I'd have to wait until this blasted war was over before I'd be able to find you again. And now...' He wrapped his arms around me, sinking to his knees in front of my chair as he did so. Then he kissed me; and his lips were as warm and firm and dry as they always had been, and his arms were strong and taut, and I tilted my head back and smothered his lips with my own, and I hoped with all my heart the kiss would go on for ever and ever and never, never, ever have to end.

I think I must have swooned again for a few seconds, for the next thing I remember is Gerry's arms under my shoulders lifting me to my feet. 'Come on, old girl. Let's get you out of here. Herr Birkicht!'

The interrogator looked resentful. He had not moved from his seat since I had first entered the room. 'Yes, Lieutenant Moon?'

'I am taking Driver Moon with me to the Consular Quarters.' Gerry looked sternly at the interrogator. 'It is very fortunate for you that you called me. If you had not...' The threat hung in the air.

'Very well, Lieutenant Moon. Will you be requiring any assistance?'

'No thank you, Herr Birkicht.' And with that Gerry changed his position so he was standing on my right. He supported me as we left the interview room and passed into the stone-walled corridor beyond.

I said little as we walked along. I was enjoying the sensation of feeling Gerry's left arm around me and our bodies moving together as we proceeded down the corridor and into a lift at its end. Gerry held me tightly as the lift floor pressed against my feet and we rose by five or six levels. I wondered how near to the top of the Citadel we would go.

The doors slid open and Gerry helped me down another corridor, softly carpeted in a pattern of red and grey. At the end was a mahogany door and on it there was a sign which read _Brytish Consulate_ above an enamel Cross of St George.

'Is that it?' I asked Gerry. 'Is that the Brytish Consulate? It's not very grand, is it?'

'No, it's not the main bureau,' he replied. 'This is just one of the apartments which comprise the Consul's Residence.'

'Oh, I see. Is it where you've been living?'

'Some of the time, when I've not been out on missions.'

'Missions? That does sound exciting!'

'Perhaps. I'll tell you about them later. Now, can you and Alfie stand up by yourselves while I get this door open?'

'Of course we can!'

Gerry pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. He opened it and bowed to me, in the funny old way he used to bow to Aunt Sybil when her back was turned. 'After you, Mam'zelle.'

'Thank you, Monsieur.' We passed through the door. There was a small lobby inside and another door at the far end of it.

'Go on through,' said Gerry. I did as he said, and Alfie and I found ourselves in a sitting-room, furnished with two large, comfortable-looking leather sofas, a coffee-table and a sideboard. In one wall an anbaric fire glowed redly. I sat down on one of the sofas and Gerry sat facing me on the other.

'Oh Gerry,' I said, sitting back and sighing. 'It really _is_ you, isn't it?'

'Yes, sweetheart, it's really me. Now sit tight while I go and make us a cup of tea.' He got up and left the sitting-room by another door. I heard running water and a rattling of pots.

By the time Gerry returned from the kitchen I was fast asleep.

- 0 -

I returned to wakefulness one step at a time. Usually I wake up all at once but this time I registered things in a sequence, as if I were listening to somebody telling me a story. One moment I was asleep, the next my eyelids were fluttering open. I was lying on a Chesterfield sofa, wearing day clothes rather than pyjamas or a night-dress and there was a blanket - no, an eiderdown - covering me. A pillow was cushioning my head, coming between it and the arm of the sofa. The lights were a dim shade of orange-yellow.

There was something I had to remember. Yes, that was it. I must only admit my name, rank and service number. No, wait. Something else had happened. Something wonderful. It was...

'Are you ready for a cup of chai now?'

It was the something wonderful, wearing his naval uniform and standing over me with a tray in his hands. I sat up slowly and stiffly and took the cup he offered. It was hot and delicious and I sipped it slowly.

'How long was I asleep?'

'Two hours,' Gerry said. 'It's getting late. Look!' he pulled back the curtains. Outside the window the sky - the dome, that is - was the bluey-violet colour that signified night-time in Geneva. I got up slowly and looked out with my hands on the window-sill. Gerry stood close beside me, ready to hold me if I should fall.

The apartment was near the top of the Citadel and it faced towards the south, across the Old Town and the New, over the concrete lake to the villas on the far side and the rising wall beyond them. In the days before the city was covered over the view must have been magnificent. It was still quite impressive. As I looked out and held Alfie up to see, a violet flash flickered across the artificial sky. A crackling boom followed a second later.

'Was that inside?' I asked. 'Have they broken through? Our army, I mean. Have they reached us?'

'No,' Gerry answered, 'but they're not far off. The roof was cracked last night by a corebuster. What you just saw was the light from an explosion outside. There's going to be a lot of repair work needed once this show is over.'

'Is it safe,' I asked.

'Oh yes. There are steel reinforcements threaded all through its structure. It's not about to fall down, if that's what you're worried about.'

'Are they going to repair it?'

'Certainly.' Gerry turned to me. 'This is the centre of the world. This is the place when the Holy Spirit speaks directly to us. It must be kept safe.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Of course it must.'

'Now look,' said Gerry after a pause. 'We'll be having something to eat in a mo, but you look all in. Why don't you go there,' he pointed to a door opposite the entrance to the kitchen, 'and have a wash and brush-up. You'll find some things to put on in the wardrobe.'

I looked down at myself. The floral dress had seen better days, even though I hadn't had it very long. 'Right-ho,' I said, scooping up Alfie.

There was a bedroom on the far side of the door - a large room with a wide double bed, a pair of oak wardrobes and another door which led to a compact bathroom. A bath! I hadn't had a proper bath since... I couldn't remember. I turned the hot tap on as far as I could and emptied a bottle of rose-scented bath-salts into the steaming water. Once the bath was full, I tore off my old clothes - and now the room was saturated with fragrant steam it was obvious that both they and I smelled pretty unpleasant - and lowered myself carefully into the tub.

'Ahhh.....' This was heaven. Alfie wrapped himself around the hot tap and watched me soak. I very nearly fell asleep again but eventually I dragged myself out of the bathtub and over to the basin where I washed my hair. It was just reaching the length where it was beginning to curl again. At last I'd be able to do something with it.

Back in the bedroom and with the huge dressing-gown I had found hanging on the back of the bathroom door flapping around my ankles I looked in the left-hand wardrobe. It was full of men's suits and I supposed they were Gerry's. The other wardrobe was another matter altogether. Frock after frock, half-concealed by the tissue-paper they were wrapped in. Drawers full of lacy silk underwear. A row of shoes in patent, satin and soft glove leather. Everything was so pretty, so nice.

Poor Gerry! He must have got terribly fed-up waiting in the sitting-room while I lifted every dress in turn from the rail, unwrapped it and held it up against myself while I looked in the full-length cheval glass which stood in one corner. It was nearly impossible to choose one. Everything was in my size, and as I thought of that I suffered a twinge of jealousy. If this was Gerry's flat and those were his suits in the wardrobe, then who did these clothes belong to? Did he have a girlfriend or a lover; even a wife? Well! If he did, I was determined not to take second place to her. I squeezed myself into a black silk bodice with matching drawers, garter-belt and stockings and took out the shortest, clingiest, most décolleté dress I could find. It was made of wine-red velvet, sleeveless, with a nice bit of detailing at the bust and the hem and a cinched waist. I found a pearl necklace and earrings in a little mahogany box and took a pair of matching shoes from the rail. There was a bottle of _Numéro Quinze_ on the dressing table and I applied the lightest of dabs to my wrists and neck. Finally, I put a little setting lotion on my hair and back-combed it until its waves were firmly held in place.

I looked at myself in the glass. I'm not ashamed to say that I was pleased with what I saw. My lips were rather pale, though, and there were shadows under my eyes so I put on some powder and lipstick. Now - how was that? There was only one way to find out. I opened the bedroom door and, with my heart thumping, stepped out into the sitting-room.

The results were highly gratifying. I heard a sharp intake of breath and Gerry said, 'Sunny! You're... you're amazing!'

'Not Baby Sis any more, then?'

'No, you're most certainly not. Not by a long chalk. Lady Gresham?' Gerry bowed, and a great surge of pleasure flooded through me. 'Would you like to accompany me?' And he took my arm and led me to the dining table which had been set up by the window while I dressed.

- 0 -

Although the apartment had its own kitchen, Gerry had supper sent up to us. It must have come from a very good restaurant because everything was delicious - onion soup with croutons, fillet of sole with lemon sauce, chicken stuffed with tarragon and parsley, blackcurrant and mint sorbet, and wine from Hochheim and real kaffee with real cream in it. I hadn't had anything so nice to eat and drink for ages. I wondered where the ingredients had come from in this city where so much of the food was _ersatz_.

We sat facing one another while a silent, white-jacketed attendant served us. There were so many questions I wanted to ask my brother, but he moment I opened my mouth to speak he held up his hand. 'Eat first, talk afterwards,' he said.

So we ate, and afterwards we talked. We sat side by side on the sofa and I put my arm around him and held him close. 'If only we could see the moon and the stars,' I said.

'"The Moon is the World's Daemon",' Gerry said, quoting from _The Lay of Imlachoïs_.

'"And the Stars His Flower'd Meadow",' I responded, completing the line. I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. 'Come on now. You've kept me waiting long enough. Tell me everything that happened.'

'Everything?'

'Absolutely everything. Start with the last time you left Pompey.'

Gerry turned to face me. His eyes were blurred, as if they had lost their focus. 'Sunny, this is very difficult for me. After _Thaxted_ was torpedoed and sunk I spent a long time in the water. I was tied to a lifebelt, otherwise I'd have died... drowned. I was knocked out, you see. A serious blow to the head. Somebody saved my life, and I don't know who it was. I'd like to thank him one day, but I don't know if he lived or died. So I don't remember very much of what happened, and what is worse...'

'Yes?'

'There are great gaps in my memory, from the times when I was growing up. Mummy, and Daddy, and the farm, and the house, and Aunt Sybil - some memories are very sharp and clear and others... aren't.'

'Oh, you poor thing,' I said. 'I'll try to help you.' And I hugged him even tighter. Gerry carried on with his story.

He had been washed ashore onto the Doytch coast, he said. From there, confused and suffering badly from the effects of his long immersion, he had found his way to a farmhouse, where he had collapsed on the doorstep. The farmer's wife had taken him in and put him in her son's bed and looked after him until he was able to get up and walk around again. Of course, he'd been very keen to find his way back to Brytain and report back to the Admiralty. There would have been an inquiry into the loss of his ship, but he was sure he'd have been exonerated and allowed to carry on serving his country. He'd probably been given a new ship to command.

But something happened. The local priest heard about Gerry from the farmer, during Confession. He had sent a message to his bishop, who had contacted his superior Cardinal. The result was that, a day or two before he was ready to try to make his way home Gerry had received a deputation from the Church. They had an offer to make to him. How would he like to work directly for the Magisterium?

At first, Gerry had rejected the offer out of hand. He'd wanted nothing more than to return home as soon as he could. But there was something in what they were saying. He could be a special agent, doing the work of the Holy Spirit in a different way. Sometimes, the Cardinal said, the Call is disguised. Sometimes God's will showed itself through apparent misfortune.

All this time, while Gerry was telling his story, Alfie and Eugénie sat on our laps. But as time passed, and Gerry got me a bowl of brandwijn and I sipped at it and felt its calming, relaxing warmth soothing me, they moved slowly closer to one other until, with a strange, familiar shock, they came into contact. I looked, startled, into Gerry's eyes, but he smiled reassuringly and it was all right. It was like it had been before, when we were children. I sat back again and closed my eyes for a moment. I could feel Eugénie's fur rubbing against Alfie's, giving me a lovely, exciting, floating sensation in the small of my back.

The lights in the sitting-room were orange-dim. The air was warm and the sofa was soft and comfortable. Again I found that I was feeling sleepy, but this was a different kind of sleepiness. I found myself slipping in and out of consciousness as Gerry told me how he'd decided to give the Magisterium a try and gone to Geneva with the Cardinal to see the Blessed Pierre Leroque himself. He had been completely won over.

'Since then,' Gerry said, 'it's been one thing after another. I've been to Carolesburg, and Moskva and Mumbay. New Lincoln and Juliesville - even to the Antipodes. Perth in December - good heavens! Hot and sticky wasn't in it.'

But I was paying him very little attention now. I'd meant to ask him why he hadn't got in touch with Daddy and me. Why hadn't he sent a letter or a 'gram to let us know he was alive and well? Perhaps he had - perhaps he'd told Daddy but it had been a great big secret and he wasn't allowed to tell me. How unfair that would have been!

I had been sitting upright on the sofa to begin with but as time had passed I had slipped down on its polished leather and the hem of my dress had ridden up so that I was in danger of committing an immodesty, as Aunt Sybil would have put it. I tugged it back down again and tried to sit up.

'What were you doing in Perth?' I murmured. I was feeling very dozy, but relaxed and euphoric too. The brandwijn's fumes were dizzying me, but with a nice kind of dizziness. Alfie and Eugénie were intertwined now and the lovely feeling had spread all along my spine. I sighed and wriggled, feeling the velvet material of the dress brushing against the silk of my underclothes. I slid down again on the sofa's leather covering, and this time it hardly seemed to matter that the tops of my stockings were showing or that the red dress was slipping from my shoulders. I tucked my legs underneath myself. I was becoming increasingly aware of the sound of my heartbeat, thumping in my throat. I kissed Gerry again, on the cheek, and he responded by turning his face to mine and kissing me once more on the lips.

That kiss... I felt Gerry - the strength of him, the warmth of him, passing to me though his touch. I moaned, and threw my head back and put my arms around him and pulled him to me as hard as I possibly could. I could hardly breathe, but I didn't want that kiss to end.

We parted - we had to, to catch our breath - and I put my head on his shoulder, gasping and feeling the short hairs at the back of his neck standing up against my face. I kissed him again, many light kisses, tasting his skin, breathing the scent of him, and I heard his breathing become as shallow and quick as mine. I put my hand through the buttons of his shirt and let it rest against his chest, my bare skin next to his bare skin.

'Gerry?' I said, 'Could we?' I was trembling violently. I wanted him next to me, unclothed. I wanted to get out of my own clothes. I wanted his arms around me in the bed in the next-door room. I wanted him to make love to me. I pulled at his tie, ruining its perfect knot, and undid the top button of his shirt so I could bend and kiss the hollow of his throat.

'Sunny...' No. He wasn't going to deny me. I wouldn't let him. He was going to be mine. 'Sunny, look...'

'Shush,' I said, and undid another of his shirt buttons. I tasted his salt-sweet skin with my tongue.

'No,' and it was an order from a naval officer, 'Look.' The idea that I might be subject to Gerry's orders thrilled me strangely, so I obeyed him.

I looked, and what I saw made me doubt my eyes for a moment. Alfie had Changed. He stood on the rug that covered the floor between the two sofas, lit on one side by the red light from the fire. I've said before whom he looked like when he Changed, or at least hinted at it. There was Gerry next to me on the sofa, and there he stood, naked, on the rug before us. But not only Gerry. My head swam. Next to Alfie, with her arms linked around his waist, stood a tall, slender girl with long dark hair, hazel eyes and an expression of utter delight on her face.

_Eugénie_. She too, all along. It wasn't only Alfie and I who had been _special_. Just as Alfie had taken Gerry's form, so Eugénie had taken mine.

Alfie was deeply aroused, I could tell; not only by looking at him but also by the feelings that were chasing through my loins. I became completely motionless and so did Gerry, waiting to see what would happen next. Eugénie stepped back to the opposite sofa and pulled Alfie towards her. She lay down on it, with one hand resting on its back and the other trailing on the floor and looked up, smiling, at him. 'Come on, Alfie,' she said. 'What are you waiting for? Please, be with me now.'

Alfie knelt in front of the sofa and kissed Eugénie's breasts, and held her head in his hands before joining her. Gerry and I kissed too. Then our daemons performed that act of which I had read many times and imagined often, but never conceived could engulf me so, while Gerry held me tightly lest I come to harm.

- 0 -

Afterwards I hoped we would all sleep - and I mean _sleep_ - together, but Gerry said he had urgent business - Church business - to attend to, even though it was late, so Alfie and I gave him and Eugénie a goodnight kiss at the door. They had both Changed back by then.

Later, lying between the bed's satin sheets in a lovely long soft white cotton night-dress, I dreamily asked Alfie what it had been like for him.

'It was... you know.'

_No, I don't know._

'Nor will you ever, you being a girl and all. Now quiet please, Sunny. I'm tired.'

So was I. Too tired to ask him why he was speaking out aloud rather than directly to me. I let him climb into the bed and we went to sleep.

- 0 -

The next morning Alfie and I were still alone. I got up and took another bath and, returning to the bedroom, looked in the wardrobe to choose a day-outfit to wear. But by mistake I looked in the wrong one. I must have still been rather befuddled. 'Silly!' I said and shut the door with a bang. But as I turned away to walk around the end of the bed and look in the other wardrobe there was a clattering sound from inside the one I had just left. I went back to have a look and when I opened the door, something fell out. It was an officer's sword.

So this was Gerry's wardrobe after all, and that was his sword!

'No, it can't be,' said Alfie.

'Why not?'

'Because... Where's its sheath? Why isn't the sword in it? And why's it here and not at the bottom of the sea? He wouldn't have been wearing it on duty. It would have been in his cabin.' Alfie jumped down from my shoulder and looked closely at the weapon.

'No, it's just as I thought. It's not Gerry's sword. It's yours.'

Mine? I stooped and picked it up. Beggar me, but Alfie was right. Here was its regimental insignium and there were the melted bits the sky-bolt had made.

'I don't understand.'

'Neither do I.'

Holding the sword in my hand I opened the bedroom door and passed through into the sitting-room. The window was open and the full light of Geneva's false day was streaming in. Resting on the table where Gerry and I had dined the night before was Peter's knapsack, and on it a piece of paper, which read: _Here are your bits and pieces. Back later. Breakfast in the kitchen. Gerry xxx._

'My things?'

'You had them with you when you were caught by the security forces. That's why Gerry thinks they're yours. Besides, those are _your_ clothes rolled up inside it.'

'I suppose so.'

I opened the knapsack and emptied its contents onto the table. Everything seemed to be there - the books, the funny photogram, the alethiometer, the broken Sony and my Brigade uniform. I had an idea.

_Alfie, I think I'll wear the uniform today. It's a bit on the muddy side, but..._

_But it's the right thing to do. Good, you're making sense again._

_Oh, and we're talking normally again, are we?_

_We are._

_Because..._

_Because you're behaving normally again._ I stopped and thought for a moment.

_Alfie... you're not ashamed of what happened last night, are you?_

_Bloody beggaring hell! What do you think?_

_But it was what we both wanted to do, wasn't it?_

_Was it? Are you sure? Tell me something, Sunny. Gerry told you everything that had happened to him after his ship went down, didn't he?_

_Yes..._

_But why didn't he ask what _you_ had been doing? Wasn't that was a little odd, don't you think? Why didn't he want to know what his sister had been up to for the past two years? Why didn't he want to find out how you got here?_

_And why did he try to hide your sword?_

- 0 -

I brushed down and sponged my uniform as best I could. It wouldn't have passed Sunday Inspection, but at least it wasn't so offensive to the eyes and nose any more. There was a supply of bread and eggs and bacon in the larder and kaffee in a jar on the counter-top, so I made myself a fry-up and took it and the kaffee back into the sitting room to eat. According to my watch it was ten o'clock in the morning.

I changed out of the night-dress and into the uniform, being sure to fasten the sword securely to my belt.

Gerry appeared around midday. He looked surprised to see me wearing the uniform and he said so.

'No, it's not funny really,' I said, giving him a sisterly peck. 'I'm still in the Ambulance Brigade, so it's right that I should wear its uniform.'

'But not a sword, surely? Ambulance drivers don't fight, do they?'

'Only when they have to. Now look, Gerry, There's somebody I've got to see.'

'What - when you've got me?' Gerry grinned and put his arms around my waist. The sword bumped against my left leg.

I gave him another kiss. 'You bet, brother mine. It's Peter, the man I was with. He's not well. I've got to see if he's all right.

' He is all right, isn't he? They weren't too rough with him?' I released myself from Gerry's embrace.

'The cripple? Yes, they took him to the Cantonal Hospital.'

'Hospital?' I felt something clutch at my heart. 'They've taken him to hospital? Peter's hurt? Oh Gerry, we've got to go there now! Straight away!' I picked up the knapsack and slung it over my shoulder.

'Now. Right now. I mean it.' _Cripple_. I hated Gerry for calling Peter that.

- 0 -

The Cantonal Hospital was built in the form of a letter U with a real grass lawn - the only one I saw in all that city of concrete and stone - enclosed within its arms. Gerry and I took a lift down to the street level entrance of the Citadel and walked - very briskly - the half-mile to the hospital buildings. A nurse-receptionist took Gerry's details, made a telephone call, and directed us to the third floor where, she said, we would find Mister Joyce in Room 343. He was in a private room, then. This either meant he was being well looked after, or that he was very sick and perhaps likely to die.

I couldn't bear to wait for the lift to come, but dragged Gerry after me to the third floor and into the corridor. I wasn't all that familiar with the layout of hospitals - they hadn't let me go in when Mummy was dying - but I was sure I'd be able to find a numbered room.

301, 303, 305, 307... I was obviously going in the right direction. Yes! Here was Room 343, all the way at the end.

_This doesn't look very good_, said Alfie. My heart sank. No, it didn't. I opened the door of the room.

Peter was lying with his eyes closed in a tightly made-up iron-framed hospital bed, with white pillows piled up behind his head and his arms stretched straight out in front of him on top of the blankets. A flexible tube led from a bottle suspended from the head of the bed to a needle taped to his left wrist. _Poppy_. They were drip-feeding him intravenous poppy. That was what they had done to the worst cases in the Field Hospital - the ones who weren't going to be shipped back to Blighty. The ones who were going to be allowed to die in peace.

Gerry stood behind me in the corridor, invisible from inside the room. I rushed in and, being careful not to disturb the poppy-tube, bent over Peter and kissed him. His Viola stirred.

'Peter, Peter, it's me. Sunny. It's all right, I'm here now.'

'Sunny?' Peter's eyes opened slowly. 'Sunny here?'

''Yes! Look! It's me! We're safe.'

Peter's voice was slow, slurred. He must have been receiving an enormous dose of poppy. His face had been so cold...

'Safe?'

'Yes, safe.' I choked for a moment. 'Soon our boys will be here, and the city will be liberated and we'll be able to go home.'

Peter looked up. 'Home? Have you got it?'

'Got it?' I didn't understand.

'The Word,' Peter whispered. 'Have you got the Word?'

'Oh, never mind that for now,' I said.

_Sunny!_ said Alfie. I ignored him.

'And Peter! Look! The most amazing, wonderful thing has happened. Oh, you won't believe it! You'll never guess who's turned up!'

I turned to the door. 'Come in, Gerry.' My brother entered the room.

'Gerry, meet Mister Peter Joyce, a Master of the Guild of Temporalists. Peter, this is my brother Gerry. Lieutenant Gerald Gresham Moon, of His Brytannic Majesty's Royal Navy.'

I'd imagined this moment many times. It was going to be... so lovely. So happy. It was going to be the happy ending, the last page of the story where the Prince and the Princess have, after all their troubles and adventures, finally got married and drive off in a pumpkin coach to live Happily Ever After. But no. Not this time. Not for me, and not for Peter.

His face, which had been relaxed and calm under the influence of the poppy, became twisted with hate. Hate, and despair. 'Oh no,' he said. 'Oh, in the Name of Christ, no.'

'Peter, what's wrong? What have I done?'

He smiled ruefully. 'You haven't done anything, sweetheart. Nothing at all. Nothing wrong. But as for him...' He turned in the bed and faced my brother.

'I know you. I know who you are. You are Martin James, and I claim my five pounds.'


	24. The Voice of God

_The Voice Of God_

_With our love,  
We could save the world._

George Harrison

'Oh Peter!' I ran over to the bed and sat on it, took Peter in my arms and hugged him.The lights in the room were very bright and they seemed to be making my eyes water. 'Were they awful to you? Did they hurt you very badly? I should have come before. I'm so sorry!' My heart was aching with remorse. Why had I forgotten about him for so long?

And what had they done to Peter to make him say something as crazy as that? How had they damaged his mind? Was it the effect of the drugs that were dripping constantly into his veins? I had heard that they could bring visions of paradise, but also a terrible, reality-obscuring cloud of fear and suspicion. I turned to look at Gerry. His face was perfectly calm.

'Gerry, what's going on?'

'Nothing, sis, nothing.

'But what does Peter mean? Why does he say your name's Martin James? Who _is_ this Martin James, anyway?'

Gerry shook his head. 'I don't know. Maybe he knows somebody by that name in Oxford. I've no idea why he should think that person is me.'

'Because you _are_ him.' Peter struggled to an upright position in the bed. 'You are my old master's brother, who tried to steal his business from me, even though you'd already nearly ruined it by mortgaging it to the moneylenders. You are the man who tried to separate Viola from me. You killed my friend Jim.' Peter looked at me. 'You like stories, don't you? You like writing them down. You told me.'

So I had. I nodded.

'How would you feel if you were writing a story and it was cut short half-way through? Would you be happy? Unhappy?'

I shrugged. 'Unhappy, I suppose.'

'Jim was a writer too. He never finished his book. Think, Sunny. His life was a story and that wasn't properly finished either.'

'Yes, but Peter... This is my brother Gerry. Look at him! You've seen his photo.'

'He may look like your brother, but he isn't him. Believe me.'

I shook my head. 'I'm sorry, Gerry. Mister Joyce has been a real friend to me. The very best. He's brave and he's decent and he's steadfast. I'm very fond of him and I think he likes me. But... they must have done some awful things to him in the cells. Look! They're pumping poppy or something into him now. Peter... Shall I take the tube out of your arm? Could you bear it? You might see things more clearly then.'

Peter's face worked strangely. 'I _am_ seeing things clearly. Very clearly. Never more so. But yes, pull it out. I can do without it.'

I leaned over him and removed the poppy-drip from his arm as gently as I could. Even so, he flinched and a quick gasp of pain escaped his lips. I kissed him on the cheek. 'We'll get you out of here as soon as we can,' I said and slowly, deliberately, ran my hand down Viola's back, allowing the soft grey fur of her bushy tail to loop around my fingers. Peter sighed deeply and I, just for a moment, found myself inhabiting his ruined body once more.

'Thank you,' he said.

Oh, Peter. What was I going to do with you? What were any of us going to do? I felt so confused.

- 0 -

Alfie spoke out aloud. 'Gerry,' he said. 'There's something you mentioned just now that puzzled me.'

'Yes, Alfie? What was it?'

'You said that Mister Joyce might have known this Martin James in Oxford. Why there? Why Oxford?'

'Well, because...'

'Because nobody so far as I know has said anything about Oxford. I haven't. Sunny hasn't. Mister Joyce certainly hasn't. So why do you think they might have met, or whatever it was, in Oxford?'

Gerry laughed. 'Because, little Alpharintus, James, Cholmondley, Joyce and Joyce are one of the foremost makers of clocks in the Brytish Isles. Their head office is in Shoe Lane, in Oxford. That's why I guessed this mythical Martin James might have lived there.'

'I see. That's perfectly clear, except for one thing. Why do you think _this_ Peter Joyce is Master Joyce the famous clockmaker, rather than some other Peter Joyce? It's not such an unusual name, after all. Neither Sunny nor I mentioned him last night. You weren't the slightest bit interested in what we'd been doing. Why was that? If you really were Gerry, you'd want to know all about everything Sunny and I have been up to since you last left home. If you're somebody else you'd probably not care.'

'Alfie! Don't be so horrible!'

'No,' said Gerry. 'He's got a point. You know how wrapped up in myself I can be sometimes. It's a bad fault. I'm sorry about it. Anyway, if you don't believe I am who I say I am, why don't you quiz me? Ask me some questions only the real Gerry Moon could answer. I'd better remind you, though, that I got a nasty bump on the head when my ship went down. There are some things I don't remember at all, and lots of stuff that's still pretty vague.'

'What a surprise,' said Peter with a scowl. 'Very convenient, I must say.'

'That's a nice get-out for you, isn't it?' said Alfie, much to my disgust.

Gerry smiled and shook his head again. 'Go on. Ask away.' I had a quick think.

'All right, then,' I said. 'What's my pony's name?'

Gerry thought for a moment. 'Regulus.'

'Regulus? You're sure?'

'Yes, of course.' Was he really? That changed matters. I stood up.

'I think you may be right,' I said to Peter. 'He's not my brother. You see,' turning to the figure who stood by the door, 'the only pony of mine you could possibly have remembered was Scipio. But Scipio had an accident not long after your ship went down and Daddy bought Regulus for me instead. It was too unfair, you see, to lose my brother and my pony so soon after one another. But you couldn't have known that, could you? You weren't there. Well?' I drew my sword and waited for his admission of guilt.

'Sunny, Sunny.' Gerry shook his head and smiled. 'Did they ever tell you about Ockham's Razor at school? No? Well, let me educate you now. It's a well-established theological principle and it states, to put it at its simplest, that when faced with two or more explanations for something you should always go for the less or least complicated one. Now consider: which is more unlikely; that I am an impostor who has somehow managed to impersonate your long-lost brother and discovered, by some means involving various acts of derring-do and espionage, all kinds of information about you; or that I'm who I say I am and that I wrote to our father and asked him for news of you, my darling sister?'

'Oh.' Put that way my doubts seemed ridiculous. 'You mean that you and Daddy have been writing to each other, but nobody's told me anything about it? Do you know something? I wrote to you all the time. Nearly every day, sometimes. I told you everything that was going on. All my secrets. Everything.'

'I never got any of them.'

'You silly sod!' I thumped Gerry's chest. 'Of course you didn't get them. I didn't post them! What do you think I am - mad?'

_I had wondered about that_, said Alfie.

_You never said anything to me._

Gerry put his hand on my shoulder. 'I'm sorry, sis. We both decided it was better if you didn't know. Security, you see. Need-to-know, and all that.'

'You're saying I didn't need to know that you were alive?'

'You might have inadvertently let something slip at school. We couldn't risk it. My work was too important.'

I sat down on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. I didn't know what to think. 'Peter,' I said after a minute or so. 'Why are you so sure that Gerry is Martin James? Where did you get that idea from?'

'I can tell by looking at him. If you focussed your eyes in the right way, you could too. It's something Arthur taught me.'

'Oh, him. Funny he's not here now, isn't it?'

'I wish he were.' Peter sighed again and fell back against the pillows. We were getting nowhere.

- 0 -

'Do you think you could put that deadly weapon of yours down now?' Gerry said.

'Oh yes. I'm sorry.' I put the sword back in my belt. It glinted in the intense artificial light from the overhead tubes.

'Are we done? Only I've got to get back to my work and I'm a little uneasy about leaving you and Alfie here by yourself.'

'Uneasy? Why? Don't you think I'm safe?'

'Frankly, no. He's delusional, can't you see?'

'Don't be so horrible!' I could sense the colour rising in my cheeks. 'He's been hurt. Look at him!' I caught my breath. 'I have to say you're not talking or behaving very much like my brother. Since when did you become so beggaring pompous? Is that what working for the Church does for you?' I looked at Peter again. 'How did Martin James speak?'

Peter's mouth twisted in a half-smile. 'It's ironic, you know, this man calling me delusional because I never met anyone so deluded in my life as Martin James. Yes, he was pompous. It came from an extraordinarily inflated sense of his own importance. He truly believed he had carte-blanche from the Authority to do anything he wanted. And why? Because he thought he spoke with God's voice. God cannot lie, so neither could he, just as he thought that the deeds he performed - and he did something to Viola and me that was truly abominable - were God's acts, with him as God's agent. In other words, he could do no evil act, no sin, because everything he did was of God. You couldn't argue with him, because God spoke through him. He spoke the word of God and that cannot be wrong, by definition. And... he had a daemon who could take any form, despite his being an adult.'

'Including human form?' What was I saying?

'I never saw his Lilith take the form of a succubus, but I have no reason to believe she couldn't.' My expression must have given me away, because Peter's voice, which had been harsh with remembered anger, became softer. 'Sunny, I know all about you and Alfie. Arthur told me in London.'

'What? You knew all along?'

'Yes. It was why I... couldn't get on with you very well to begin with.'

'Oh... I was going to tell you. There in our attic. I _would_ have, really I would.'

'I know. Don't worry about it. You've done nothing wrong.'

Had I done nothing wrong? I was beginning to wonder.

Gerry had been silent while Peter and I were talking. Now he spoke, and what he said came as a complete surprise to me.

'Sunny, do you know I saved your life?'

What did he mean? I put Alfie down on the bed. 'Yes, I remember. I was five and I decided I _would_ go swimming in the duck-pond even though I 'd never been in any water deeper than a bath before and...'

'No,' Gerry interrupted me. 'Not then. A week or so ago.'

'What? A week ago? How?'

'I'm going to have to tell you a story first.'

'Or a lie,' said Peter.

'Shut up, you!' It was very nearly a shout and there was a strange, unfamiliar edge to Gerry's voice. I put my hand to my sword.

'Sunny - don't pay any attention to him,' said Gerry. 'He's upset. Listen to me instead. You're a good churchgoing girl, aren't you?'

'Yes, of course.'

'And you want the Church to prosper? You want it to grow and live?'

'Yes, but not as it is now. Not sealed away in a horrible concrete cocoon like this and not hoarding all the world's knowledge the way it does. That's wrong. I can't agree with that.' I glared at him.

'I'm going to surprise you - I agree with you. It's totally wrong and an abuse of the Church's power. It's a symptom of something that's gone very astray and if you listen to me I'll tell you how and why.'

I held the sword steady. 'Go on, then.'

_Don't let him trick you! _said Alfie. He had his doubts then, too.

'I'll begin with a question. Who or what is the Magdelena?'

'The daemon of the Holy Spirit, of course.'

'Yes, that's what we're told. Now - why would a spirit need a daemon? Do animals have daemons? No they don't, not even intelligent talking animals like the Armoured Bears of the north. Do angels have daemons?'

'I don't know. I've never met one.'

'But you've seen pictures of them. Every oratory and chapel has one. Do the angels in those pictures have daemons?'

'Er... no.'

'Quite right, they do not. Now, what about spirits or ghasts? Do _they_ have daemons?'

'Ugh! I... I don't know.'

'Ask Alpharintus, then.'

_No, they don't._

'So it looks as if the only creatures - Created lives, I mean - who have daemons are human beings.'

'And the Holy Spirit.'

'So we've been told for longer than you've been alive. But what about Jesus Christ?'

'You mean the Blasphemer?'

'That's what he's called now. But in an older tradition - and it's not so old, at that - the Magdelena was known to be the daemon of Christ, who was a man. A real human being. Now what makes more sense - that the Magdelena should belong to an incorporeal spirit, or to a man?'

'Well...'

'What do you think?' He looked at Peter.

'You know what I think. The Magdelena _was_ Christ's daemon. This Holy Spirit nonsense was only dreamed up forty or so years ago in the Great Fear. But what point are you trying to make?'

'It is this. Holy Church has gone astray, just as Sunny says. It's lost its way. It's tried to hold on to its power by monopolising God's Word, and the result has been war, suffering and bloodshed. We need something new, or the return of something old. We need the Christ.'

I looked at Peter. Surely he didn't believe all this? 'Peter, this is rubbish isn't it? It's blasphemy - false teaching.'

'No...,' said Peter slowly. 'Not altogether.'

'What?'

'This man, whoever he is, has a point. We humans need a link between the mundane and the world of the transcendent. It's too big a gap for the human spirit to leap by itself. We need an Intercessor. Sunny, do you remember that story you read in my book, about the world that lost touch with God?'

I shook my head. 'Yes I do. I liked it... I can see what you're getting at. Oh, I don't know. Maybe you're right. But what has all this got to do with me?'

'That's what I was coming to. Jesus - the original Jesus who died two thousand years ago - was born of a virgin. We are told that His daemon was settled at birth. You and I are both virgins. Our unsettled daemons are the exact opposite of the Magdelena, but their union - the lying together of a succubus and an incubus, as the vulgar call them - has the potential, like the opposing poles of a lodestone, to bring forth something very wonderful. Something very wonderful indeed.'

The sword shook wildly in my hand. 'You mean... last night... you...'

Peter sat up. 'Last night?' His voice was unusually high and tinged with panic. 'Last night? Sunny, no! What happened?'

I stammered the words. 'Alfie and Eugenie... they did it. You know. They... slept together. It was... lovely. It felt lovely...'

'It _was_ lovely, my Sunshine. It was a brave and noble act you and Alfie did. An act of sharing. An act of creation. A _holy_ act.'

Peter swore violently.

'And as for you, Mister Joyce. You invoked the name of the Christ not ten minutes ago. Can you really claim that you don't want to see His return?'

'Not like this, you piece of filth.' I was trembling with the anger that vibrated in the air. The anger and the fear. How had we come to _this_? My mind was more confused than ever. What was Gerry trying to say?

'Gerry, you told me you'd saved my life. How was that?'

Gerry folded his arms. He was still standing with his back to the door. 'I was coming on to that. You know that I've been working as a Church Agent. I told you I've been travelling all over the world in the service of the Magisterium. Well, the more I saw of life, the more I realised that there was something missing in the world. Yes, the Church's guiding hand was present everywhere. Yes, the Word of God was being safeguarded in the Archives of Geneva. But there was an unease abroad, a feeling of... disconnection. And there was another thing. Jesus Christ had been officially denounced as a heretic in the _fiat dei_ of 2012, but he hadn't disappeared. Everywhere I went, there were old bibles, crucifixes and icons that should have been surrendered to the Magisterium to be expunged but hadn't. The Jesus story simply wouldn't go away, because we humans _needed_ it.

'I tried to persuade the authorities here, but I was brushed off and told in private that I was putting myself in mortal danger by raising such matters. The Church's teaching was the Church's teaching, and final. Past errors of doctrine would not be repeated. So I confined myself to speaking to my colleagues and, over the course of a year, managed to raise some support. But this was all going nowhere because, however desirable the restoration of the Christ might be, there was no focus. It wasn't going to be enough to bring back the legend. We needed the _man_.

'I was stuck. Until... one day, I found an old book in the Condemned section of the Agents' library. Yes, not every heretical book is destroyed and Agents like myself need knowledge of the more common heresies in order to combat them. In an appendix to this book was an account of the different kinds of what it described as daemon deviancy and in there... In there was an alternative version of the story of the nativity of Christ. It took my breath away, because I knew that I had, at last, been given the key that would unlock the conundrum I faced - how to restore the Intercessor to mankind.

'I can still remember how it was - the flickering candle, the musty smell of the ancient tomes with which the library was stocked. I was entranced and exhilarated by my discovery and I snipped the appendix from the book and took it back to my quarters. From then on I concentrated my mind on only one thing - how I could bring us together.'

My heart was beating fast. 'But what happened then? How did you save my life?'

'I thought that my mission would be achieved in London. We very nearly met in Chelsea, that Sunday night when you allowed yourself to be lured to the headquarters of the King's Guard. I was all set to rescue you when events took a different turn from the one I had anticipated. I lost you again. But then, by the greatest good fortune, you absconded to Frankland. From that point it was comparatively easy to steer your path here.'

'You? You arranged for me to meet Peter and Capitaine Fourneaux and find the tunnel into Geneva? Were you the young man on the train, or was he one of your agents?'

'Your path was guided for you.'

'He's lying,' said Peter. 'You and I only reached the city because of the hard, dangerous work of the gyptian underground. They got me to you. It was a gyptian boat - the _Marie-Louise_ - that was struck down, and her captain who was killed.'

'Yes - but not by me. I have told you that my ideas were regarded as heretical by my superiors. Somehow - even now I don't know who betrayed me, or what torments he was made to suffer - my opponents learned of my plan to bring you here. It was they who ordered the cosmic weapon to be used against you. But it was I who warned Mister Joyce through the use of his oracle and saved your lives. And it was I who disabled the orbiter so that another attempt could not be made on your life. That weapon is now fully functional again and it is I who controls it. There has been, you might say, a slight rearrangement of the power structure of the Magisterium in the past week. A revolution. Soon the forces of the Alliance will sweep away the Pagan Horde and Geneva will be liberated. With that liberation will come a new hope and a new peace. The world will be set free by the New Christ and all will be harmonious once more between God and Men.'

The conviction in Gerry's voice was unmistakable, his fervour utterly compelling. I was completely convinced by him. 'There, Peter,' I said. 'Now do you believe that this is my brother? We Moons really know how to make things happen, don't we?'

Peter's voice was grey with despair. 'Yes, you do. You know how to kill. You know how to destroy. You know how to plot and connive. And especially, you know how to lie. Don't you, Miss Moon? Don't you?'

'I used to... I don't now. I haven't lied to you. I know I haven't always told you the whole truth about myself, but I never told you a lie.'

'No, Lady Gresham?' Peter spat the words out.

I put my knuckles in my eyes and pressed hard. 'Stop it! Stop it! Don't be so horrible!'

Gerry took my arm. 'Come on now, Sunny. Leave him. He's... hurt, like you said. I'll get the doctors to come and see to him after we've gone.'

'Oh, yes. I'm sure you will. They'll _see_ to me all right. What you mean is they'll see to it that I never leave this room alive.'

'I'll come again tomorrow,' I said. 'I promise. I can do that, can't I?'

'Of course you can, sweetheart,' said Gerry. 'Come along now. Let's go.'

'Yes, off you go.' Peter's voice was charged with bitterness. ' Off you go back to your lair, you bastard. Off you go to lie once more with this innocent young girl. Off you go to commit grievous fornication with her. Off you go to paw at her beauty with your foul, disgusting hands. Go on - go and wreck her life as you have ruined mine.'

Gerry's face was distorted with anger. 'I know what you're thinking. You have a very nasty mind, Mister Joyce. You have the kind of sick, twisted mentality that cannot bear to see something fine and wonderful without sniffing around to find something wrong with it to fuel its jealousy. Because it _is_ jealousy you're suffering from, isn't it? You _wanted_ her, didn't you? You wanted to have her for yourself, but she didn't want you. She turned you down, didn't she? Look at her. She's beautiful. Why would she want you? Why on earth would any girl, let alone one as lovely as she, want to lie with a dirty, pus-infected _cripple_ like you?' And he pushed past me. His meerkat-daemon's claw scratched my face.

I'll never know what he intended to do; whether he was going to strike Peter, or - as I now believe - plug the poppy-drip back into his arm to sedate and silence him. But as he pushed me aside the hilt of my sword caught against the iron rail at the bottom of Peter's bed. The blade swivelled up into the air.

He never saw it move. He was too intent on getting to Peter and doing him harm. So he never realised that the the tip of the sword was pointing directly at his abdomen and in his haste to do harm to my friend he was unable to stop himself before it penetrated his clothes and slid, deadly-sharp, into his flesh.

'No!,' he cried, but he was moving far too quickly to stop himself and he fell forward onto the sword and drove it hard into his body. It entered his torso in the region of his stomach and left it just below his shoulderblade, piercing his heart and killing him instantly. He slumped to the floor and his weight levered on the blade and pulled me down with him. The sword's point narrowly missed my right eye.

- 0 -

_There was a girl crying in the dormitory - I wished she'd shut up. The silly little bint was screaming fit to burst. She kept howling the same word over and over again and it was getting to be the most terrible bore. Why didn't somebody give her a damn good slap? 'Shut up,' I told her, but it did no good. The trollop was bawling and shouting more than ever. 'For heaven's sake, give it a rest!' I hissed, but she continued to ignore me. If this carried on we'd have the Head of House round and the next thing you knew the teachers would be involved and we'd be up in front of Miss Selborne or Miss Alton and there's be merry hell to pay. What was the shrieking ninny's name? I'd have to move fast or we'd lose all our Sixth Form privileges. What was it - ah yes, Moon. Sonya Moon. 'Sonya,' I hissed. 'Stop it! The prefects'll hear us. We'll be put on reports. Come on, calm down or we'll all get into the most awful stew. What's up? What's wrong?' The girl looked at me and I could see that her eyes were red-raw with corrosive tears. 'Can't you tell me?'_

_She drew a deep breath. 'Gerry... my brother. He's been killed. Stabbed to death. Look!' and she started crying again, while great sobs shook her body._

_'Your brother? Oh that's terrible. But you must stop crying so loud or there'll be ructions. Where's your daemon?'_

_'Here,' she sniffed._

_'Hold on to him - that's right. Tell him your troubles. It'll be all right. But please - keep it down!'_

_The girl clutched her mink-daemon to her chest. 'Thank you. You're very kind. You're a real friend.'_

_'That's all right.'_

- 0 -

I picked myself up from the side of Peter's bed and held on to the rail. I was still breathing great shivering, shuddering breaths and I felt more than a little unsteady. I looked down. A pool of crimson blood was spreading across the freshly polished tiled floor, pouring from the open wound in the daemonless man's back. I was just beginning to wonder - where was my sword? Why wasn't it still caught up in my belt? - when there was a clang and the hilt fell to the ground. I bent down to pick it up. To my wonder only the brass and leather of which it was made remained. Of its polished steel blade there was no sign - only a wisp of smoke and a brown stain on the back of a navy blue jacket.

Alfie was clinging to my arm. _Let's look at him_, he said. _Turn him over_. So I got down on my knees and with a great heave lifted the prone figure, turned him over and looked at his face.

He no longer looked like my brother. He was a grey-haired, middle-aged man, older than Peter, and his face was twisted in pain and hatred. I looked in astonishment, still holding the empty sword-hilt in my right hand..

I had killed Gerry - but I had not killed him. My brother was dead, but it was not by my sword, not by my hand. This man was not my brother but he was dead just the same, and it was as if Gerry had died again. I slumped onto the bed and put my hands over my face. I lay next to Peter - although sheets and blankets separated us - and tried again to cry away my broken heart. Peter let his hand rest upon my arm.

'Sunny, dearest Sunny, it's all right. It's over now. He's gone. Don't cry; please don't. I don't think I can bear it.'

But all I could say while I lay on my side and gasped for breath to soothe my aching lungs was, 'Gerry, Gerry...' I put my arm around Peter and dragged myself onto him, letting my head fall next to his on the pillows.

'He's gone away. I thought I'd got him back, I thought I'd found him again, but he's gone for ever. I'll never see him again. Never, never...'

Peter ran his arm down my back. 'Darling Sunny, sweet child, I know how hard this is for you.'

I shook my head and sobbed, 'No you don't. You're not me. Nobody knows how I feel. They can't!'

'But I do. I was hardly any older than you when...' And he told me again about the time he found Lyra Silvertongue dead in her Jordan College study.

'We've both lost the ones we loved most dearly. Oh Sunny, let us be as kind to one another as we possibly can in the time that's left to us.'

I sniffed and dabbed my eyes on the pillow. 'You were always kind to me.'

'No, I wasn't. You know that. But we know each other now. We _really_ know each other at last, so how could we...'

'...Ever be cruel to one another again? Oh, Peter!' I hugged him as hard as I could and rocked myself against him to and fro, to and fro. He wrapped his right arm around me and held me tightly in return.

- 0 -

We were still lying in each other's arms when we were disturbed by a knock at the door.


	25. The Word of God

_The Word Of God_

_We gotta get out of this place  
If it's the last thing we ever do._

Weil & Mann

There was a knock at the door and I let go of Peter and stood up. Who could this be? What should I do? Would I be forced to kill somebody else? What could I use to defend us now my sword was gone? There was a jug of water at the head of Peter's bed and I took hold of its handle. 'Come in,' I said and the door opened slowly and someone entered. It was a man - a short, slight man wearing a hospital porter's uniform and with a magpie-daemon perched on his left shoulder. He closed the door slowly behind him and stepped over Martin James' body. 'Hello Peter,' he said. 'Sorry I'm late.' His eyes were a deep penetrating blue.

'Arthur! Arthur Shire!' said Peter and his face cracked in the most enormous grin. 'By all that's splendid! At last! Where the jolly hell have you been?'

'Outside,' said Arthur's Dust-spirit. 'Stuck outside the city. He was keeping me there.' He pointed to the body. 'I couldn't get past the walls. He was holding me off.'

My heart was beating fast. 'Will you help us escape? Come on, you must know the way! Look, we've got to get out of here. Someone might come in any minute and find us.' I towered over him, I suddenly noticed. I must have been at least four inches taller than he was. Arthur raised his hand and put it on my shoulder. It weighed no more than a breath of air.

'Sonya Moon,' he said in a gruff voice. 'You have caused us no end of trouble.'

'I have?'

'You certainly have. I've chased you all over the place. You don't listen to what people tell you, do you?'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean you always have to do everything your own way.'

'Yes?' I put my hands on my hips. 'So what?'

'Don't be so damn cheeky! Matters very nearly went very badly wrong here. It's only by the greatest good luck that the worst didn't happen.'

Oh. Did he know about...? How much did he know?

'What do you mean?'

'Don't mess me about! You know what I mean.'

'You mean what he,' I pointed to Martin James' prone body, 'was saying about the Christ? What we did together?'

'I do.'

'How do you know about all that?'

'Alfie has told me.'

_Did you?_

_Yes. It's for the best_.

Peter interrupted us. 'Arthur,' he said, 'why are you talking like that?'

'Like what?'

'Posh.'

'You means, why is we not talking like this?'

'That's right. That's how the Arthur I know speaks. How do I know you're not a fake too, like him down there?' Peter's eyes were twinkling.

'That's not funny,' I said.

_Damn right it's not_, said Alfie.

'Sorry,' said Peter, and squeezed my hand. 'Of course this is the real Arthur. It must be - I feel better already. Now, like Sunny says, let's go. I hate this place.' He swung his good leg out of the bed and levered himself up so he was wedged against the side of it. 'Ready?'

Arthur leaned back against the door. It hardly moved under his weight. 'It's not as simple as that. I think you're forgetting something rather important.'

'And that is...?'

'Why we came here.'

'Oh.' Peter took hold of the bed-rail. 'That.' He sat down again.

I sat down next to him and put an arm around his waist. He'd looked so happy only a minute before when Arthur appeared and now he was all fed-up again. 'Are you talking about the Word of God?' I said.

'Yes,' Arthur replied.

'Well, that's easy! We've already found it, haven't we, Peter? It was in a glass cabinet in the Department of Employment. All we've got to do is find our way down there again, pick it up and escape. I say all... but wait a minute! You'll know. Arthur - how close are our forces? All we really have to do is hang on here until they break through the dome and rescue us. Perhaps Peter's son Danny'll be with them.'

But Arthur ignored me. Instead, he crossed the room and sat on the other side of the bed from me. 'Peter,' he said. 'You know you're here for a reason, and why it's you and Sunny who were chosen and nobody else.'

'Yes...'

'And you know that I can only help you so far. There's a point beyond which I can do nothing.'

'I know.'

'And I know, too, that you could stop right here and be safe, just like Sunny says.'

'Yes.' Peter stroked Viola and her tail curled around his fingers the way it had around mine. _What is it, Alfie? What are they talking about? What do they mean by _chosen

_Listen. Perhaps you'll learn something._

'But we won't, will we?' said Arthur.

Peter sighed deeply and let his head fall forward. 'No, we won't.' His words were scarcely audible.

'Now,' said Arthur, 'this is what we have to do...' And as he spoke, I realised that, however badly I had thought we were doing, however awful it had been when I had killed the false Gerry, and been the cause of the death of Jacques Fourneaux, and seen Jack and Minta die in Marialabone and tried to help Sister Moulson care for the dead and dying soldiers in the field hospital, there might be something that was even worse than that. Those deaths and injuries had been terrible enough, but they had been _unintended_, by me at any rate. I had not planned their occurrence. I hadn't sat down and worked out how I could cause those men to be hurt, or those lives to be lost, or those families to be bereft. But what Arthur was saying, in his quiet, rough-edged voice, was different. It involved me directly. It was something which was in my power to prevent, if I wanted to. If I had the courage to.

'No!' I said, interrupting Arthur. 'No! There's no need to do this. There's no need for all that... destruction. Is there? Peter? Peter?' I looked into his eyes and took him by both shoulders. 'Look! You don't have to do it. You mustn't do it. It's wrong!'

'Five minutes ago,' said Peter,' I'd have agreed with you. But in the end, what Arthur says is right. I knew that in London, when I agreed to come here, but I put it to the back of my mind.

'You see, Sunny, it's not enough by itself to free the Word of God and give it to everybody. That's a fine thing to do, and I want you to try to do it. But knowledge is not something frozen in books or crystals. It's alive. It grows. Every time a theologian looks at a leaf, or at a star, or finds a new pattern in an array of numbers, or invents a new way to arrange the movement of a clock,' he smiled faintly, 'that's another page written in the book of learning, or another step on the road to enlightenment. If we allow the Church to maintain its monopoly on knowledge, all the men and women, boys and girls who have died in the War will have died for nothing, because at the end of the day nothing will have changed.'

'But you said that if we freed the Word and gave it to everybody in all the countries in the world, then there would be no more need for war.'

'Yes I did. But remember what I also said. Knowledge is an organic, living thing. It is ever-advancing from childhood to maturity. The information that we free today or tomorrow will decay as time passes and new discoveries and revelations are made by theologians everywhere. In time it will lose its value, as yesterday's newspaper is worth less than today's or a snake sheds its old, worn-out skin. In no more than five years, if nothing changes, the Church will once more own the Word of God exclusively and we will all be back where we started. The Afric Nations and the Empires of the East will have the same reasons for war they did three years ago, and as little recourse against the Church that they had back then. In ten years we could all be at war again.'

'But if they're defeated today, surely they'll give up?'

'Would you, if you were them? I doubt it! They'll come back stronger than before, armed with more powerful and destructive weapons than ever.' Peter laughed, but there was nothing humorous about him. 'No, Arthur's right. There is an evil here that we must put an end to once and for all.'

'But...'

'I know. The human cost will be appalling.'

I stood up and turned to look at the wall. Alfie climbed to my shoulder.

_This is wrong. It _must_ be. There has to be another way out._

_We'd like to believe that, wouldn't we? We'd love to sit tight and do nothing, hoping that something will turn up. We'd like to wash our hands of all this._

_You mean we could just stay here and hope that the alliance will do the job for us?_

_We could. But suppose they didn't? Then where would we be? How could we live our lives, knowing that we might have prevented a war even more terrible than the one which killed Gerry if we'd only had the guts to see things through to the end?_

_Alfie! No! _I hated him then, using Gerry's name even while his treacherous copy lay dead at our feet. If I could, I'd have... I'd have killed him and died myself. But I couldn't do that. I turned round. Peter and Arthur were still sitting on the bed. The body of Martin James was still lying on the floor.

'Are you sure about all this?'

'As sure as we possibly can be,' said Arthur.

'Then... all right. Count me in. I'll come to the Citadel with you. I'll do all I can to help.'

'Oh Sunny,' said Peter. 'I knew you'd say that. That's just the kind of girl you are. But you're too young.'

'I am not!'

'Yes, you are. Much too young. Your life has hardly begun. Arthur and I can do what needs to be done between ourselves. If it were not that it will take two people to do what we have to do, Arthur could manage it by himself.'

'But I want to come with you! I want to help!'

'I know. But I could never let you do this. I want you to live and be happy and free. But there will be two keys to turn and two levers to pull if we are to finish the job we came here to do. Arthur needs me to come with him.'

The tears were starting to run down my cheeks. 'You're saying I'm useless!'

'No, you're not,' said Arthur's Dust-spirit. 'What Peter is saying, and I completely agree with him, is that your path and his are going to lead in different directions from now on. Neither of us knows for sure where those paths are going to end up.'

'But...'

'Peter has chosen his path. It is the one that seems right to Viola and him. It is a difficult one, and very perilous. But you do not need to take that way yourself. It is his path, not yours, and it is for him to walk alone, with my help.'

'But I told you. I want to help too.'

'I know. But you could do no more than I can, and you might make it harder for Peter.'

'You see, Sunny,' said Peter, 'when the time comes when I do what I have to do I must be free to choose. How could I make the choice I know I must make if it would mean the death of Alfie and you? How could I be the cause of your death, when I love you so much? My hand would freeze solid, or I would cut it off, rather than do that.'

'No... no... no....' I faced the wall again. Arthur stood up and walked, feather-soft, to where I stood weeping. 'Sunny,' he said, 'you're very brave. Everybody knows that. I'm asking you to be brave in a new way. Not by doing things like volunteering for service or going to the Front or carrying Peter into Geneva, but by _not_ doing something. You must help Peter and me, not by rushing along with us and being valiant and adventurous but by being patient and steadfast. That is much harder. There's no fun there, no thrill of battle or rush of excitement. No glory. Can you do that?'

_Remember_, said Alfie. _Remember how we stood up to Herr Birkicht, the Interrogator, in the Citadel? Remember that story of the Comrades Three where Beryl had to keep quiet, and be thought a coward and a traitor, so that Rosemary could reach the Verdigris Tower and find the Key of Trifax without being discovered?_

_That was only a story._

_Then remember how we yielded to Martin James, the ersatz Gerry. We could have stood up to him, if we'd tried._

_But we..._

_I know. It is my guilt as well as yours. It is shared, as is everything between men and daemons._

_Oh, Alfie..._

After a while I turned and faced the man and the spirit. I rubbed at my cheeks with the back of my hand. 'All right. I suppose I'll have to let you do what you want. But answer me one question, Mister Shire. You're not a real man, are you? You're more like an angel. You have no physical strength. How are Peter and you going to get to the top of the Citadel without me? Who's going to support him as he walks?'

'There's a way,' Arthur said. 'A way Peter knows. He has seen it before'

'In another world,' said Peter. 'Far away, and long, long ago.'

- 0 -

We sat in a circle with our daemons in its centre. At a sign from Arthur we linked our hands. Our daemons touched - the spirit and the real. Immediately a feeling of great peace enveloped me. We were one. I could feel Arthur and Peter within me, as they in their turn could feel me within them. Our daemons sat rapt, completely absorbed into one another.

Arthur's face was fierce with concentration, smooth with the calm of the trance, blissful in our shared consciousness. As we sat and time passed by the thousandth of a second I slowly became aware of a change in the quality of the light in the room. It was losing its anbaric glare, softening and taking on a tint that was, to begin with, the merest suggestion of orange-yellow but became steadily less translucent and more dense; increasingly suffused with gold. Living gold, that swirled and twisted around us, that spun and orbited about our bodies and formed, while all the clocks of the world hesitated between tick and tock, a whirlpool whose focus hung suspended above our daemons.

I realised that the golden light was shot through with tiny particles which glowed even more brightly than the surrounding radiance. They looped and twisted about one another, forming orbits of living threads, spinning through complex interconnected knots of power. These brilliant loci were the points from which the glow sprang. They were living creatures on their own account.

_They are stars_, said Alfie, or was it Viola, or was it Sarastus? _They are the stars, and they know of our need and they have come to help us now. They are emissaries of the Dust-stream and they bring with them life and love and healing and strength. They will renew us._

As I gazed in awe, the bright points multiplied a hundred-fold. They concentrated themselves onto a dense ball in the middle of the vortex. Then - and there was no time between this moment and the next - a great burst of energy erupted from the surface of the glowing sphere. It sprang into the air and pierced Peter's chest, transfixing him with a spear of light. The head of the spear leapt over his head and dived back into him, emerging from the back of his neck and looping over his chest to impale him once more. Over and over again the coils of energy threaded through Peter's body until it could no longer be seen. In my mind I heard the voices of the stars as they sang; nacreous and pure, high and melodiously sweet.

_No... They're killing him... Stop... Please..._

Peter was now completely encased in a gilded shell of stardust. His body lifted from the surface of the bed and became horizontal, floating over it like a magician's levitation. I was caught between breaths, but I found I could still count, so I did:

One... two... three... four... five... six... seven...

eight...

nine...

And the spell broke. Peter fell onto the bed with a thump. And then...

And then he stood up. On both feet. And he raised his hand. The left one. And he opened his mouth and laughed, and ran to the door, leaping over Martin James' body and waving both arms around his head like windmills. He dashed over to me and picked me up in a great bear-hug and held me to his chest and smothered my face with kisses, and as his left arm touched me I felt its power, surging with cosmic energies.

Arthur was still sitting on the bed, looking a little dazed. Peter dropped me again and threw himself onto the bed, putting his arms around the spirit. 'Dust-gathering!' he cried. 'Dust-gathering! I never thought I'd see it again! Oh Arthur, you're an absolute marvel! I can do anything now! Anything at all!'

'For a while,' said Arthur. 'For a while.'

- 0 -

Peter went to the closet and took out his old clothes. I watched while he changed into his city suit. The whole left side of his body was encased in flying streamers of sparkling yellow light, racing faster than the eye could follow and supporting him as he moved. His delight in his restored freedom of movement was plain to see. Finally he stood up, and although he was not a tall man he suddenly seemed to tower over Arthur and me.

'Now for you,' said Arthur.

'What do you mean?'

'What I mean is this: You came into this building with a man who looked like your brother. You will not be allowed to leave it by yourself. He must be there to accompany you.'

'But he can't. I... killed him.'

'So you did, and a good thing too. You mustn't blame yourself. It was an accident, caused by his eagerness to hurt Peter. I must say, though, that if you had killed Martin James on purpose I wouldn't have held it against you. He had done many evil things in his life, in all the universes where he had lived.'

'I don't understand. Universes?'

'Worlds, then. Peter has probably told you about the times he travelled to worlds other than this. Martin James was also such a traveller. He was exiled from this, his native world, as a result of an abominable crime he committed twenty years ago. He would have died if he had stayed here. Until recently he was living in the Metaverse, which is the world that is all worlds.'

'I still don't understand.'

'In time you will. For now, it's enough to know that he will not trouble us again. Now; are you ready?'

'Yes,' said Alfie.

'To do what?' I asked.

_To Change_.

Oh, of course. _Alfie_ was the key to our getting safely out of the hospital. _Go on_, I said. I felt a familiar wrench and Alfie the mink-daemon was no longer present. In his place stood a handsome young man, sun-tanned and naked. He helped me roll over the body of Martin James and remove his clothing. Much of it was stained with blood and I had to sponge it off as best I could in the wash-basin. Peter - even infused with Dust as he was - could not bear to watch and lay on the bed, face down and holding Viola close.

At last it was done, and my brother - or his simulacrum - stood next to me. 'I think,' said Arthur, 'that you should be very sparing indeed in your use of this ability of Alfie's from now on. It is deadly dangerous to the health of your spirit. Promise me, won't you?'

'I think that's one lesson we've already learned,' said Alfie.

'Dead right,' I added with a grin. Everybody laughed.

- 0 -

And then, all of a sudden, there was no reason for us to be there any more. As if to reinforce the point the building shook under the impact of a huge explosion from outside. The battle was very close to us now. 'Yes,' said Arthur. 'It's time. Sunny and Alfie, you go first. Make your way as quickly as you can to the tunnel. Run as fast as possible and don't stop until you get out of the other side. Peter and I will try to give you all the time we can, but our hands may be forced and we may have to act sooner than we would like.'

'I understand.'

'Then you must say your goodbyes now. If all goes well I will see you in England, but I do not think that you and Peter will meet again in this world.'

_Oh. _Now I knew it, even though I had probably known it all along. This was the end.

Peter stood up and crossed over to me, holding his arms open wide. He no longer looked like a tired middle-aged man, but more like a boy no older than me, with a broad smiling face and an unworried brow. He was as strong and vigorous as he must have been when he first came to Oxford to learn his clockmaker's trade. I stepped towards him and we embraced and kissed each other on the lips as lovers do, or old friends who have met again after many years' absence. We stood together and I let my head rest against his. He was, as I have said, young and full of life and I could feel the breath of the stars on my cheek and hear their melisma singing in my ears. I whispered so that only he could hear, and he replied in the same manner:

'I love you, Peter. I wish you didn't have to go.'

'I love you too, Sunny. I'm only doing what I have to do. You know.'

'I do know. I'll never forget you.'

'I'll not forget you either.'

'Then goodbye and good luck.'

'Goodbye and good luck. Be safe. Oh, and look after my knapsack, would you? I shan't be needing it any more.' That hit me unexpectedly hard, and I had to swallow a couple of times.

_Goodbye_, said Alfie to Viola and _Goodbye_ came her answer. _Goodbye forever_. I drew in a deep breath and we parted. Then Alfie and I picked up Peter's knapsack with my sword-hilt and all his precious possessions in it, opened the door and walked through it and out into the corridor. I shut the door slowly and carefully behind me and let the latch slide back into place with a soft click. Then, choking and biting my lip so hard I could taste its blood welling up salt-sweet in my mouth, I held Alfie's hand as tightly as I could and walked slowly down the passageway to the stairs. _I mustn't cry, I mustn't cry_, I kept telling myself. _Don't cry, Driver Moon. Look happy - you're with your brother, the well-regarded and important Lieutenant Moon. Smile. It's the only way we'll get out of here in one piece._

_Alfie, are you all right? Can you keep your form steady?_

_Yes._

We reached the lift. I pressed the call button and waited for it to arrive. What if somebody came and saw Alfie and me, both apparently daemonless? _They won't see that_, said Alfie. _They won't believe they could see that. They'll assume they missed seeing them. _Everybody_ has a daemon with them, after all._

_Everybody except the witches._

_But we're not witches. I'm certainly not. They know that. People only see what they expect to see. Calm down - your heart is banging away fit to burst!_

The lift came and we got in. There was a woman already inside - a nurse with a cat-daemon at her feet. As Alfie had predicted, she ignored us.

Then we were at the ground floor level. The lift doors swung back and we stood aside to let the nurse leave first, which she did as if it were her natural right. We followed her into the entrance hallway, Alfie's hand clasped in mine. I was shaking so much I was sure somebody would notice. As we passed the front desk he turned to speak to the nurse on duty.

'Finished with Mister Joyce now, sister, but he's asleep. I suggest you leave him for an hour or two. Let the poor man get some rest. Any news of the Liberation?'

'Yes, sir.' The sister coloured slightly. 'The alliance forces are only a few hundred metres away. They could break through at any moment.'

'Grand news, eh, sister? Exciting times!' Alfie smiled confidently.

'Splendid news, Lieutenant Moon. Goodbye for now, sir.'

'Goodbye sister. Keep up the good work, eh?'

'Yes sir.'

We pushed out of the swing doors. _I never knew you could be such a charmer_, I said.

_Neither did I._

_Well mind you don't overdo it in future!_

There was a little side-street a short step down the hill towards the old lake and Alfie and I ducked into it. He Changed back into his mink form and struggled out of the pile of clothes that had suddenly smothered him. I gathered him up into my arms. _Let's go_!

We dashed out of the alleyway and ran down the hill. I had a thought, and called out, 'Take cover, take cover!' as I ran. If could save a few lives from what was going to happen if Peter and Arthur were successful it would be worth it. We passed the _Estaminet König_ and I shouted into its gloomy interior, 'Take your mother down to the cellar, Jean! Take shelter!'

The streets were busy with people running to and fro. Some of them were making their way eastwards, preparing to greet the liberators. Other, with perhaps more sense, were going in the opposite direction. The air was full of a white haze of floating concrete-dust caused, we supposed, by the impact of shells and rockets on the roof of the dome shaking material loose from the inside. The crack that I had seen last night from the windows of Martin James' apartment was not visible now. Perhaps it had been patched up.

_Faster, faster_. I was risking a trip and a nasty fall on the pavement, but I knew that Peter and Arthur would already be making their way to the Citadel. I wondered what form Arthur would take so that they would gain admittance. Surely nothing would go wrong now? But why shouldn't it? Half of me still wanted them to fail. I hated this place - hated it with all my heart - but I had no reason to hate the people who lived there. 'Run, run away! Hide deep underground!' I shouted as I reached the Quai des Bergues and turned right. Passers-by stared briefly, but paid me little attention. The whole world was mad that day. Liberation was coming to the city; and what was one more lunatic girl dashing about and shouting at the top of her voice? Another boom sounded - from the east this time - and mortar shook from the faces of the buildings.

Liberation was coming. Yes, but destruction too.

- 0 -

The front door of the Department of Employment was wide open. In fact, as I neared it I saw that it had been shaken from its hinges and lay shattered in pieces on the ground. I ran up the steps and through the vacant entrance lobby. This was the first critical moment. If there was an officer on the desk I would either have to bluff my way past him or somehow disable him. But I doubted that there would be anybody there, today of all days. Not with the end of the war so near.

I was right. The lobby was empty. I was about to open the double doors at the back of the room and find the passageway beyond when Alfie said, _The Word! _

Yes, of course. I ducked behind the empty marble desk and opened the glass display cabinet. Where... yes! Here it was, replaced in its old position by the methodical police force of Geneva. The glass sphere which looked like a paperweight but was in fact a crystal store of all the knowledge of the world.

_How are we going to read it?_ said Alfie.

_Let the theologians worry about that!_ I picked the crystal up and stuffed it into the knapsack. Now for the last hurdle. Would the sentry still be posted on the door to the cellar room? I crashed through the double doors and ran down the corridor.

No! Terrific! The door was unguarded. But was it unlocked?

_Bound to be_, said Alfie, and he was right. Only a fool would lock an emergency exit. I opened the door and slipped into the room beyond, closing it behind me. It was all as I remembered it, but unexpectedly dim. Of course it had seemed brightly lit after the darkness of the tunnel. Never mind. I strode across the floor to the hole with the ladder and turned round carefully so I could climb down it safely. I had just put my feet on the top rung when the door rattled, horribly loud in that empty room. I had been followed! Somebody was after me! Quickly I started to climb down, but just as I was getting my head below the level of the floor the knapsack caught on the edge of the hole. I lost my footing with the shock - my left boot felt for a rung but found only empty space and slipped. My knees buckled and I fell ten feet to the bottom of the ladder, hit my head on the floor and passed out.

- 0 -

I don't know how long I lay concussed on the earthen floor underneath the cellar room. It may have been as much as a couple of hours or it might have only been five minutes. What is certain is that nobody came into the room after me, or if they did they didn't bother to check the ladder. It was, as I have said, a strange day when nobody was behaving normally.

Oddly enough, my first thought on waking to bleary consciousness was to wonder whether the crystal containing the Word of God had been damaged or maybe even broken by my fall. I opened the knapsack and in the half-light I saw that I could dimly glimpse the blinking red light and the flowing green lines within. That was something. My part of the mission was still going well. But what about Peter and Arthur? How were they doing? I had to get up and start moving down the tunnel straight away. I stood up and tried to grasp the iron upright of the ladder to steady myself but as I raised my left arm there was a horrible crunching sound and I felt a sharp pain. I let it fall, the breath whistling through my teeth. I tried not to scream.

_It's broken,_ said Alfie.

_Wrenched, anyway, _I replied_. I can't do anything about it now. We must go. If we stay here we'll be killed. Come on._ I let the useless limb fall to my side. There was a clicking, cracking tearing from inside it as it moved and I cried out helplessly. I took a step forward into the blackness of the tunnel, but with every movement of my body my arm moved and gave off stabs of agonising pain.

_Stop,_ Alfie said. _Sit down._

_We've got to go!_

_We're going nowhere if we don't do something about that arm. Lift it up across your chest. Here, let me help you. _I sat down and Alfie climbed across my front. _Lean forward_. I did so, hoping that I couldn't be heard. _Now let me..._ Alfie passed the straps of the knapsack underneath my broken arm and over my shoulder. _Sit up_. I did, and as I moved the strap tightened and lifted my arm. The pain made me feel giddy. I whimpered - coward that I am - but as I staggered to my feet I could sense that the knapsack's strap was holding my arm tightly against my chest. It wasn't going to move any further.

_Sorry about making all that fuss, Alfie._

_Don't be silly. Look! Our hospital experience has done us some good after all!_

I grabbed hold of the other strap with my right hand and together, Alfie riding on my shoulder, we set off as quickly as we could go into the black mouth of the tunnel. I had no idea whether we would ever see its far end. We walked and walked and walked and the light receded behind us and the only way I could avoid bumping into the walls was by holding out my right arm and feeling for the scrape of brick or stone.

- 0 -

_Hurry, hurry, hurry_, said a voice that could have been mine or could have been Alfie's. _I'm doing the best I can_, I replied. I was, although I had given up on running or trotting along as the motion jerked my arm around too much. The strap worked loose from time to time, forcing us to stop to tie it up again.

How long was the tunnel? Four miles. How quickly were we walking? A fast walk was three and a half to four miles an hour. So - we'd reach the other end of the tunnel in just over an hour so long as we didn't stop too often. Our progress would be much quicker than before. I was already splashing through the damp section which had given us so much trouble on the way to Geneva. Only an hour. That should be long enough, except that I didn't know how long we'd spent knocked out at the foot of the iron ladder. It could have been any amount of time. Peter and Arthur might already be in the control room at the highest point of the Citadel, warming up and aligning the guidance tracers.

- 0 -

A ghastly thought suddenly struck me. The other end of the tunnel... The end... Oh, no. How on earth could we have forgotten that?

_I know,_ said Alfie. _It's blocked by the ruins of the hut._

_You didn't say!_

_What would have been the point? We'd still have had to come down here. There was no other way out._

_So there's no point in carrying on?_

_There's _every_ point. Keep moving._

So I did.

- 0 -

I trudged on for another half hour at least. I tried to guess the time of day. By my reckoning it was something between about one o'clock and maybe three. There would still be plenty of light in the sky, then. Better keep going. So I walked and walked, but I was becoming more and more tired and confused. My head ached from the fall and there was nothing I could take to stop it hurting. I kept on seeing little sparkling points of light ahead of me, and I'd think that there was a way out, but when I turned my head to the side they were still there. So they were only inside my head, then. We had passed the dampness and although I should have been able to walk for ever without stopping I did take a rest every two hundred paces or so, just to lean against the wall and let Alfie tighten the strap that was holding my arm up.

There came a time when I was thinking, _We must be there now. We must have got to the chamber where the stone stairs lead up to the hut. _I was still wondering when we would reach the end when I became aware that Alfie and I were no longer alone. Who could be down here with us? Were we being followed? I turned round. Perhaps I had been right after all and somebody had been trying to enter the cellar room after us. Out of the darkness came a sound like a curtain being drawn. I cupped my ear with my hand. Was it real, or just the delayed echo of my own footsteps? I stood absolutely still and stopped breathing. There it was again.

'Hello,' I called out. 'Who's there?'

There was no reply. I didn't know what to do. I no longer carried a weapon with me. My sword's blade had been destroyed. Perhaps the hilt would make a good club, but I couldn't reach it. The simple act of turning round pulled at my bad arm, making me wince with pain. Silence... then there was another swish, like cloth rubbing against cloth. Something disturbed the air in front of me. There was definitely someone or something there, coming closer all the time.

'Hello? Where are you? What's going on?'

And then with a brittle flutter something brushed against my face. A bird, or a moth or - I shuddered - a bat. 'Quiet!' it said. 'They can hear you in Paris!'

'I'm sorry.' I lowered my voice. 'Who are you? Are you a Speaking Creature?'

'I am a witch-daemon, Gienah the raven-formed. My witch Pluvia Vega is waiting for us above ground.'

'Did Arthur send you?'

'Arthur? Who is Arthur? I do not know. Pluvia received a message, that is all. She sent me into the subterrain to find you. Quickly! We must leave. I need the open air - this underground is hateful to me.'

'Of course. Come on, Alfie. How do we get out?'

'There is a side-passage. You walked straight past it, you foolish girl. Come quickly! We must leave here now. Fast! Run!'

'It hurts when I run.'

'I do not care! Run now. Run quickly, or I will leave you behind.' And with a sweep of air the bird-daemon brushed past me and flew into the darkness. I hitched up the knapsack and ran after him.

'Faster! Faster!' came the voice from ahead of me. 'It is death to stay here.'

'I'm going as fast as I can,' I panted. 'How will I know when I reach the side-passage?'

'I will tell you,' echoed the raven-voice in the distance.

Forty paces. Fifty. A hundred. And then the echo of my footsteps changed and the pressure in my eardrums reduced slightly. 'Here?' I asked.

'Here. Turn left. Follow me. There is no time to lose.'

I turned to the left and crashed into the wall at the corner where the side-passage was. It was my right arm that took the brunt of the impact; even so I sobbed with pain as the knapsack moved and tugged my broken limb out of position.

'No time for crying now, you silly thing! Run. Run!' Again the flap of invisible raven-wings ahead guided my way. I counted paces again while Alfie clung on to my shoulder. One hundred. One hundred and fifty. The ground beneath my feet was starting to slope upwards and the muscles in my legs were complaining.

'How much further?'

'Stop!' squawked the raven-daemon from only a few feet in front of me. 'There is a ladder ahead. Climb up it. Open the trap-door at the top.'

'My arm...'

'Never mind your arm. Do as I say, or we will all be killed.'

'But I can't...'

'Shut up, girl! Do as you are told!'

_I will help you,_ said Alfie.

I held my right arm out ahead of me and quested with my fingertips for the ladder. Two, three steps forward and my hand met a rough stone wall. I brushed to the left and right.

'Hurry up!' said the raven.

There!_ Now,_ said Alfie. _You hold on with your right hand and I'll do what I can on the left_.

I mounted the first rung. My right hand slid up the iron upright. Then the next rung. My hand slid up further. Then the next, and this time Alfie stretched around my neck and caught the other side in his sharp claws. Another rung. Another. Five more, and then my head bumped against wood. I was expecting it, but even so I nearly slipped back down again.

'How can I open it? Is it locked?' I didn't see how I could hold on to the ladder and undo a bolt at the same time.

'My witch will help.'

'Tell her to make it snappy!'

The bird whistled twice and I heard a thumping from above. Then the trap-door was flung back and a wave of light washed over me.

'Quick, quick!' I nearly leapt up the last few rungs. A strong hand caught me under the right arm and pulled me up. Alfie and I stood blinking in a room which, to my surprise, appeared to be a kitchen in an ordinary house. I looked around for my helper, but all I saw was a glimpse of white skin under trailing black rags and a glossy wing resting against a bare shoulder. 'Westwards! Go west! Don't look back!' said Gienah, before taking wing and following his witch out of the open window. I saw cloud-pine against a blue afternoon sky and a skybound figure with a raven at her side and then nothing, except maybe the suggestion of a twinkle from an amused eye.

_That was the rudest daemon I've ever met! _said Alfie.

_He saved our lives._

_We're not safe yet. Look!_

I looked and only now did I realise how perilous our position still was. We stood in an ordinary kitchen maybe, but the house around it was in ruins and the floor was covered with loose rocks and a thick layer of dust. Gienah and Pluvia Vega could have just as easily flown out through the ceiling as the window. Both had been shattered by shellfire. Carefully I stepped out of the remains of the doorway, but even as I caught hold of what remained of its frame I lost my footing and fell, twisting my left ankle. I picked myself up again and hobbled out through the hallway, past piles of fallen woodwork. The front door had been blown in by the bombardment which this house and the village it stood in had suffered. I made my way slowly down the steps to the muddy, rubble-strewn garden at the front of the house. There I sat down on a piece of masonry which might once have been the garden wall. I did not think I would be able to walk very far, despite Gienah's urging.

I looked around to take stock. The sun was still a fair way above the horizon. I guessed it was six or seven o'clock. It was eerily quiet. I had expected to emerge into the middle of a battle or, better, behind our lines. I wondered what had happened. Were our armies already in Geneva? I hoped not - but if they were not there, where were they?

My left leg hurt like hell and I didn't dare put any weight on it. I had no idea how I was going to get to safety. I looked to the east. Although I'd walked for over an hour underground I could not have got much further than three miles before reaching the surface. The three-hundred foot dome still bulked massive and high before my gaze.

_Come on,_ said Alfie. _We've got to try._

So we had. I got to my feet slowly, but as I'd expected would happen a sharp pain stabbed at my left ankle when I tried to walk. I sat down again with a sigh.

_Alfie..._

_Yes?_

_Can you help me? Please? Can you Change and support me?_

_Arthur said..._

_I know. But please..._

_No, I will not. He was right. We cannot take the risk. Not here, not now. Wait a minute._ Alfie ran back into the ruined house. I gasped - he was suddenly as far removed from me as he had ever been and I could feel the strands which linked us stretching tight, like a band of caotchuc. I heard him rummaging about and a minute or so later he emerged tail-first, with a long piece of wood clenched between his teeth. He opened his mouth and dropped it. 'Over here!'

I walked stiff-legged over to Alfie, knelt down and picked up the piece of broken window-frame he had found. Yes, it would do.

_Who's a clever little chap, then?_

He ducked his head modestly. _Come on. Let's get going._

I stood up carefully and wedged the post under my left armpit, holding it in place with my right hand. It was not elegant, but it was as good a makeshift crutch as I was going to get on such a day and in such a place. There was a road, littered with shrapnel and debris, which led in the direction of the sun and away from Geneva. We set out along it. Our time was running out.

- 0 -

Our progress was slow and painful. We soon cleared the town, but the road swiftly deteriorated into a muddy track; rutted with the imprint of heavy wheels and caterpillar tracks and interrupted from time to time with shell-holes which we had to work our way around. I could not have climbed out of one if I had once fallen into it.

The road was empty, and all I could hear were the soughing of the wind and the sound of my good foot and my crutch bumping alternately against the road. _Thump-tap, thump-tap_ we went, like a crippled man.

_Yes, _said Alfie_. Like him. _I sniffled uselessly.

- 0 -

We had made maybe a couple of miles of this slow, stumbling progress and still not seen a living soul since being abandoned by Pluvia and her raven-daemon when a prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck alerted me to what was about to take place. I knew it. I had experienced it once before.

_Don't stop,_ said Alfie. _Don't turn round. Find shelter. Cover your eyes._

But all I could think was, _Peter! Arthur! They've done it! They've succeeded!_

Alfie was right, I knew. My best hope of surviving the next five minutes was to take cover, preferably behind a large rock, as close to the ground as possible. But no... I couldn't do that. I couldn't duck down and hide my eyes. Not now. There was a half-ruined shepherd's hut only a few yards away from the road so, placing the foot of my temporary support carefully into the ditch which separated the carriageway from the fields I staggered as quickly as I could over to it and crouched down inside underneath the sill of an east-facing window. I poked my head above it to look, despite Alfie's warnings. I owed it to everybody to be a witness to this sacrifice.

Just as it had before when the _Marie-Louise_ was attacked, an umbrella of pulsating green lines was forming overhead. It was wildly tilted, as if the person holding the umbrella was trying to protect himself from a strong south-westerly wind. I knew that when the green lines, which Peter had called tracers, disappeared it meant that the weapon was correctly aimed and I held my breath. But instead of the pattern disappearing, another one formed, centred in the north this time. Where the green lines crossed bright nodes appeared, throbbing with livid energy. Two weapons, then.

No, three. Another dartboard-pattern sprang into being, with its bulls-eye in the west. I was shaking with fear now. This was going to be terrible beyond anything I had ever experienced.

Four. Five. And now there were six interlocking grids spinning over us, with their intersections glowing so brightly it was as if a nebula of green suns surrounded us. The real sun - the honest yellow sun we knew and loved - was being overwhelmed by these new, man-made stars.

_No, no, no, no, no, no, no... _Was that Alfie or me saying those words over and over again?

_Both of us. Sunny... it's got to happen. It's necessary._

_Oh shut up, you! Shut up!_

_Hold me, please._ Alfie climbed up my plank-crutch and into my arms. I clasped him as closely to my heart as I possibly could, and waited. The grid-shapes jiggled and aligned themselves for a minute and a half while Alfie and I cowered and trembled in our inadequate shelter. Then they went out. Their job was done. The weapons were aligned. All that remained was to fire them.

I knew what came next, but I had not realised how loud the sound would be; how much it would throb and boom, how it would shake the earth bodily and make the stones of the hut rattle, and shake the loose plaster from the walls before pressing down hard on the ground. Everything around me - quiet and lifeless as it had been before - became utterly motionless. Any moment now...

The lightning fell. It crashed down from the dark sky in six simultaneous indigo shafts of dazzling brilliance. Six bolts of limitless violet fire descended from the quarters of the sky and converged on one single point - the apex of the Dome of Geneva. I was perhaps five miles away from the point of impact, so it was several seconds before I heard it - the roar of matter dissolving in incandescent fury. I saw it immediately. The centre of the Dome peeled back like an orange - forced skyward by the pressure of the superheated air beneath. Enormous blocks of concrete, laced with red-glowing molten threads of reinforcing steel, were hurled thousands of feet into the sky like the lava and ash from an erupting volcano. A column of fire leapt from the heart of the City - the Citadel itself, where Peter and Arthur had gone.

_Get your head down!_

_No!_

Alfie sunk his claws into my neck and I screamed aloud. My voice was lost in the growing thunder from the east as the flying detritus from the strike fell back against the remains of the Dome, crushing it beneath its weight. Still the eye-searing light from the orbital weapons continued. I blinked, but the brilliance of the plasma-bolts was imprinted on my helpless eyeballs in lines of red fire.

_Look away! Remember Lot's wife!_

_No!_ I could not. I watched with the salt tears streaming down my face and soaking into my collar as the hateful beams of lethal force struck down the best friend I had ever known and blasted him to Dust and ashes.

And five seconds after they had begun the lightning-strikes flickered out and were gone. Twice I saw expanding clouds of flame in the sky as the orbiters which had launched this deadly assault on the earth exploded with the reflected power of their death-beams. Then silence fell once more, broken only by the continuing distant thunder of collapsing walls in the city and the crackle of the growing towers of flame which were rising from its ruined buildings.

I turned around at last and sat against the wall of the hut, rocking myself back and forth, weeping without any thought of stopping, crying _Peter, O Peter, O Peter_, over and over again. How must it have been for him? How could he have brought himself to operate the controls which had brought down so much destruction from the blackness of space? What was it like, to pull the lever that brought certain death to thousands and thousands of people? What kind of person was he - to end so many lives with a simple movement of his hand? Was he a devil; or a saint?

_Peter,_ I told myself between tears and sobs, _this has to be made worthwhile. All this death - it has to be made to mean something. If we don't make a better world out of what you have done today, it will all have been for nothing. Because I could have stopped you, if I'd wanted. I could have prevented it. I could have killed you, back in that hospital room. Arthur couldn't have saved you, if I'd decided that you were both wrong when you said that the only way to end the Church's dominance was to wipe it out at the source. Oh, how I hope you were right. How can I live with myself otherwise?_

I was finding it hard to breathe. _This is too much for me. I wish I'd never been born! Alfie - can we die now?_

_Sweetheart, no, _said my daemon. _No, because of everything you just said. This has to be made worthwhile. We have taken a terrible burden of guilt upon ourselves. We can only assuage that guilt by doing everything we can to ensure that the sacrifice of Peter and all those innocent people in Geneva leads to a better world, where fewer people die from starvation and poverty because of the Church's evil policies and where everybody gets an equal chance at life. And look! We've still got the Word of God. In the knapsack. See?_

_Yes. That's better. At least something's been saved from the wreckage. We can still free the Word. _With my good right arm I opened the knapsack and burrowed down into it for the crystal globe which contained all the human knowledge that the Church had hoarded and misused. At last it would be free! This was the good thing that would come from the loss and destruction of the City and its people.

But as my hand came into contact with the glass ball a terrible suspicion crept into my mind. It was warm to the touch - too warm. Why was that so? I drew it out hurriedly and held it up in front of my face. My eyes were stinging and watering and I could still see the after-image of the lightning.

It was dead. The glass was crazed with many small fissures and it had become as black as pitch. A little smoke was escaping from its flat underside. The flashing red light was extinguished and the busy streets up and down which the ideas and thoughts of all the men and women, theologians and thinkers of the world had once thronged were as lifeless as the lost boulevards of Geneva. Just as Peter's alethiometer and Sony player had been damaged by the strike which had killed Capitaine Jacques Fourneaux, so the stray energies from the plasmas which had blown Geneva apart had burned out the Word of God.

Despair flooded over Alfie and me then and drowned us under its bitter waters. Everything was lost. All was come to nothing but ruination. I lay down and waited for someone to come and rescue me, if they could be bothered.

- 0 -

Perhaps I only dreamed. Perhaps the shock-haired girl, skinny-beautiful with a black-ink spiral drawn under one eye, did not come to usher me to the World of the Dead. It's quite possible that I didn't stand - filled with a sudden joy - and embrace her, my sister whom I hadn't known until then. Maybe there never was a Headmistress's study, with a desk behind which a winged figure sat and recorded the details of my life in a leather-bound book with creamy marbled endpapers. And it's no more than a distant likelihood that a little man, wearing a cheap suit and a felt cap, knocked quietly on the oaken door of the study and persuaded the girl and the harpy that my time was not come yet, that I still had work to do in the Worlds of Life and the greater world beyond, and that a golden-glowing figure who might have been an angel also appeared and supported the oracle's arguments, finally carrying the day.

As I say, probably I slept and possibly I dreamed. These are all maybes, not certainties. What is certain is that when a day or maybe two later a foraging party found me lying on the floor of the hut, they found I was alive - not dead as they had first supposed - and took me to a medical facility situated well behind the lines, so that when they removed the bandages and I was finally able to open my eyes it was to see Sister Moulson looking down at me with amused recognition.

'You! Driver Moon!' she said. 'I thought you were meant to be going home to England.'

'Please - may I?' I replied.


	26. The Clockmaker's Girl

_The Clockmaker's Girl_

_And in the end,  
The love you take,  
Is equal to the love you make._

John Lennon & Paul McCartney

'So you've decided to come back to us after all.' Captain Lowther looked up from the papers on her desk. I saluted her as best I could. My left arm was still in its sling and my twisted ankle was encased in a stiff, heavy plaster.

'Yes, ma'am. Driver Moon reporting for duty, ma'am.'

'You took your time, didn't you?'

'Yes, ma'am, sorry ma'am. The trains and ships were rather busy.'

'And so now you want to rejoin us, do you? You know your friends are still out in Frankland and Switzerland, I suppose.'

'Yes, ma'am. But I had orders to return to Brytain, so I did...' I hesitated. 'I didn't come straight back...'

Captain Lowther pushed her hair back with her right hand. Her Deuteronomy flew down from a filing cabinet and perched on the desk. 'Sit down, Sonya. Tell me what happened out there.'

I took a seat and, slowly at first because I wasn't sure what I should say and what I should keep to myself, I told the captain about the things I'd done since the day I went off in one of her ambulances and dumped it outside Agincourt railway station. It took quite a long time.

'But now, ma'am,' I said when I had finished, 'I've got to take Mister Joyce's things to Oxford and give them back to his wife... his widow, I mean.' I rubbed my sore eyes furiously, even though I'd been told not to. 'It's my duty, if you see what I mean.' I showed Captain Lowther the knapsack.

Her face was full of wonder and compassion. 'Go on, Sunny,' she said. 'Go to Oxford. Take as long as you need. Come back to us as soon as you're well, won't you?'

'Yes, of course I will, as soon as I possibly can.' I leaned across the desk and kissed the captain on the cheek. She blushed slightly.

'Just as soon as I can.'

- 0 -

The Joyces had a very nice house, you had to say that. No, of course it wasn't as big as my own family's place, but neither was it in the countryside where there's lots of spare room for building. Just the same, there it was; a comfortable, solid, double-fronted stone-built house set in well-kept gardens less than a mile from the centre of Oxford. It looked as if making clocks, instruments and torpedo fuses was a pretty profitable business. I asked the cab to wait while I went to the front door and rang the bell.

A stout middle-aged woman in a maid's uniform of stiff-starched black and white cotton answered the door. She was wearing a black crape armband.

'Yes, miss?' she said. I handed her my visiting card and she glanced at it. 'Please come in, Miss Moon.'

I signalled to the taxicab driver that he could leave and followed the maid into the hall. It was wide and cool, with a black and white tiled floor, oak-panelled walls, a slow-ticking grandfather clock and an open staircase leading to a galleried landing.

'If you wouldn't mind waiting in the library, miss,' said the maid, indicating a half-open door at the far end of the hall. We passed through it and I sat in an armchair by the fireplace. 'Is Mistress Joyce expecting you?'

'No, she is not,' I answered. 'Would you kindly let her know that I have come to return some belongings of her late husband's to her?' I showed the maid the knapsack I was carrying.

'Certainly, miss.' The maid bobbed her head and left the room, closing the door behind her. While she was gone, I had a look around the library. It would have been very easy for me to sneer at what I saw. All the furniture there was so very new and shiny and the books were shelved in matching sets, all the same size and colour. I wondered if anybody had read them. At home everything is very old and very valuable, and you have to be careful how you handle things in case they fall apart. Nothing here was more than ten years old at the most. To put it another way, my home had a history and this house had none. All the same, the library was a pleasant room, not as dark as it might have been, and in a special wooden case on the desk was a row of incunabula that I could tell were very precious to their owner. I got up to take a look at them.

It was hard to read the titles of the books as their spines, although they were beautifully covered in gold-blocked calfskin, were well-worn with use. I rested my hands on the green leather top of the desk and peered at them, trying to make out what they said. My vision wasn't working quite right - the light still fell behind my eyes. I knew better than to touch the books, of course.

'They're written in Roman. You might not be able to read them.' I stood up.

A woman was standing by the library door. She was shorter than me, elegantly dressed in widow's black silk with her mid-brown hair worn in a neat bob. I suddenly felt terribly scruffy and unkempt in my Brigade uniform and spiky hair.

'I'm learning Roman at school,' I said, crossing the library floor with my right hand held out. 'How do you do, Mistress Joyce?'

'Miss Moon.' We shook hands. Hers were unexpectedly hard-skinned, as though she were used to working with them. Probably she was. She had helped Peter run their business after all. Mistress Joyce indicated the chair that I had been occupying and I resumed my seat. She sat opposite me. Alfie and her fox-daemon Montgomery exchanged greetings.

'Mason tells me that you have some of my husband's things to return to me. Did you know my husband, or are you calling on behalf of the Ambulance Brigade?'

She had identified my shoulder-flashes, then. Jane Joyce was an observant woman. I would have to be completely straightforward with her.

'Yes, Mistress Joyce.' I reached down by the side of the chair and lifted up the knapsack. 'I knew him. I travelled with him to Geneva and I was there when...' I paused to catch my breath. 'I was there at the Catastrophe.' For so the newssheets were already calling it. Thousands were dead, thousands injured. Many more were missing.

'I see. Will you take tea?'

'Thank you, yes, Mistress Joyce.' I wasn't going to be able to hand over the knapsack and retreat, then.

Mistress Joyce rang the bell and the maid reappeared, her daemon trotting at her heels. 'Tea for Miss Moon and myself please, Mason.'

'Yes, ma'am.' We sat in an uncomfortable silence while a table was set up and a trolley wheeled in, loaded with cakes and a Stokeware teapot and delft set, all matching and, seemingly, brand-new.

_Behave yourself_, said Alfie. _Don't be such a rotten snob._

_Trust me._

Mistress Joyce poured two cups of tea and handed one of them to me, together with a plate on which she put a large slice of Adelaide sponge.

'Now,' she said, putting down her cup.' What have you got for me?' Her eyes were very bright.

I reached into the knapsack. 'Here're his instruments.' I handed the tool-roll to her.

'Thank you.'

'And this.' That was the Sony. 'I'm sorry, but it's broken. It doesn't work any more. Mister Joyce said it couldn't be repaired. Not by anybody in this world, he said.'

Mistress Joyce sighed. 'He loved this little box. We used to watch kinos on it. Such marvellous films, you know, much better than the ones you see in Town.'

'Here's his holo of the Parry family. It's even more broken now than it was before.'

'Thank you.' Mistress Joyce took the cracked picture from me.

'He went under the name of Parry when we were in Switzerland.'

'Did he? You must tell me all about it.'

The knapsack was half-empty now. We were coming to the important things.

'Here's his story-book.' I gave Mistress Joyce the little brown volume. It was battered and dog-eared from its travels.

'_The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky_.' She sighed again. 'Do you know, Miss Moon, I never understood these stories. They disturbed me. There are no daemons in them, did you know that?'

'I know, Mistress Joyce - I read all of them - but I also know why that is so. Peter... Mister Joyce told me.'

If she had noticed my slip-up, my inappropriate familiarity, Mistress Joyce gave no sign of it. She paused to take a sip of tea and I crammed a mouthful of cake into my mouth in a very unladylike manner. I was hungry.

'Tell me a little about yourself, Miss Moon. You are rather young to be serving in the King's Forces, would you not say? How did you come by your injuries? Was it in Geneva?'

So I told her about home, and school, and Daddy, and HMS _Thaxted_ and the Mornington Depot. I didn't say anything about what happened in the Chelsea Barracks and I glossed over some of the details of how I got to the crossroads and the _Marie-Louise_. Mistress Joyce appeared to accept what I told her at its face value.

'So your father is Sir Ronald Moon? The Government Minister?'

'Yes, Mistress Joyce.'

'He's a very important man. How is it that you were permitted to go gallivanting all over the place in the way you have described? Why didn't your father stop you?'

'He was at sea, Mistress, commanding his ship. He'll be back soon, I expect, now the War is over.'

_Oh, Sunny, that was awfully tactless... Not everybody is coming back._

_Sorry, Alfie._

Mistress Joyce paused to draw breath. 'Yes, I expect so. What else do you have for me?'

I drew out the alethiometer in its velvet pouch. 'I'm afraid this is broken too. I'm terribly sorry. Mister Joyce said he'd have been able to repair it if he... if he'd been in his workshop.'

Mistress Joyce gave the precious artefact a cursory glance and put it down. 'No doubt. I will give it to Daniel to look at when he returns from Frankland. He is my elder son and will inherit the business one day.'

I hid my disappointment at her lack of interest in Peter's alethiometer. 'Yes, Mistress Joyce. I'm glad he's safe. Mister Joyce told me he was serving in the army.'

'Did you have many... conversations, then?'

'Quite a few. When we were travelling... you know.'

'Yes, I am sure I do.' Mistress Joyce's face was frozen. 'Is there anything else?'

'Well, apart from his knapsack, only this.' I dug into the bottom of the bag and found the red exercise book. 'He wrote in it quite a lot while we were together.'

The book was taken - almost snatched - from me. 'Have you read what he wrote?'

'No!' I was indignant. 'It was private - like a diary. Of course I didn't read it. What do you take me for?'

_Don't be upset by her,_ said Alfie. _Can't you see?_

_See what?_

_She's _afraid_ of that book. She's doesn't want to know what Peter wrote in it. Not yet._

_Oh. Gosh._

'Would you like to read it now? Now that he is gone?'

'No, Mistress.' I took a sip of tea. 'It's private, and that's that.'

'Thank you, Miss Moon. I appreciate your sincerity.' Mistress Joyce leaned forward. For the first time I felt sorry for her. She was so strict in her self-control, so cold. How had Peter and she lived together? What did they talk about? What made them laugh? Where was their love - their passion?

'Tell me something, if you would, Miss Moon. Was he happy at the end?'

_Oh, what a question! How could I possibly answer it?_ I thought for a minute.

'It was more like this, Mistress. He knew what he wanted to do - what he _had_ to do. I was part of that, so I went along with him. When things were going well, I suppose he was... content. He got pretty fed-up when they went badly. Quite often that was my fault.' I shook my head. 'I'm sorry, Mistress.'

Mistress Joyce shook her head. 'Please don't apologise, Miss Moon. My husband always knew exactly what he wanted to do. Just like a man.'

We talked for a while longer, skirting round the details of what had happened, leaving unspoken those things that were better left alone. When our conversation finally came to its natural end I stood up and took Mistress Joyce's hand in mine once more. 'Thank you for seeing me. I know it's presumptuous of me to say so, but Mister Joyce was a _good_ man. He treated me honourably - he always did. He was decent and considerate and fair. I'll miss him.' And to my surprise I realised that I was telling no more than the truth.

_About time, too_, said Alfie.

- 0 -

The maid saw me out and telephoned for a taxi. As we stood waiting by the front door I noticed that she had tears in her eyes. They were the first tears I had seen in that house of mourning.

'Did you like your master, Mason?' I asked.

'Yes, miss, I did. Very much. He was always kind to me.'

'Always? Have you been working here long?'

'Nearly fifteen years, miss. I first knew the master when he was an apprentice at James' in Shoe Lane.'

'Oh, wait a minute. You're not Carrie, are you? The James' house-maid? He mentioned you. He was fond of you too.'

'He was? Oh miss!' Carrie's face split in a broad smile. 'Oh thank you, miss! That's the best thing I've heard in ages!'

- 0 -

To my amazed delight an old man with a magpie-daemon and vivid blue eyes was waiting for me at the end of the Joyce's drive, standing next to a traditional horse-drawn hansom cab. 'Taxi to the station, Mam'zelle?' He doffed his cap.

I grinned. 'Yes, please, Mister Shire,' I said. He opened the door and helped me up into the cab with a perfect gentlemanly grace. With a _giddy-ap!_ we set off and clattered on iron-shod wheels though suburban streets to the centre of Oxford. From there it was only a short drive down Park End Street and the Botley Road to the railway station.

We came to a halt in front of the main entrance and Mister Shire climbed down and opened the door for me. 'Here we are,' he said. 'The train will be here soon. It's only a few stops to Goring, and somebody will take you home from there.'

'Home?' I said, horrified. 'I can't go home yet. I've got to go back to London. They'll be needing me at the depot. I'm still under orders. Captain Lowther will be wondering where I am. Nancy and Mabel will be back before long. I've got to find them and make things up between us.'

'No, Sunny' said Mister Shire. 'You'll get your chance to see them, but it's time for you to go home now. Your aunt will be waiting for you at the station. It's time to put adventuring to one side for a while and be an ordinary girl again. You've been hurt. You need time to recover.'

'But... home? With Aunt Sybil? I _can't_ go there! I couldn't stand it. She'll fuss over me, and she'll make me attend to my studies, and sleep in the Azure Room instead of my attic, and she'll probably send me back to Highdean School. I've lost a whole year. They'll put me back with the babies.'

Mister Shire looked me in the eyes. 'Don't worry, Sunny. You'll be able to manage all that now. You've grown up a lot these last few months. You wait and see. Aunt Sybil won't be any trouble at all, just you believe me. And remember, your father will be back soon.'

I laughed. 'I suppose so. You know I always believe you, Arthur. How can I help it?' I looked closely at him. 'This is _you_ now, isn't it? The real you, at last? Not a Dust-spirit or a time-ghost?'

'Yes,' he said. 'This is the real me.' He held me and kissed me, and I nearly swooned with the pleasure of it. Me, Driver Moon, going all soppy over an old man! But he wasn't old, or young; just Arthur. I had a thought.

'Wait a minute... Can't I come with you instead of going home? Isn't your boat nearby? I bet it is.' I looked back towards the centre of Town.

'I can't slip anything past you, can I? It was Mister Shire's turn to laugh. 'Yes, the _Maggie_ and the _Jimmy_ are moored up in Hythe Bridge Street basin. My friend Harry is waiting for me there. But Sunny; it's like I said. You've got to go home now. Everybody is going home. The War is over and done with, and so are the reasons for it. We've got to rebuild everything.'

'Well, they certainly have in Geneva. What's left of Geneva, anyway...' I saw it again in my mind's eye, erupting like a volcano.

'That's true. But there's more to it than that. More than wood and bricks and concrete. There are lives to rebuild too. There's a whole world to redeem.'

'Oh Arthur! You know my copy of the Word was ruined, don't you? We did do right, didn't we? All those lives lost... All that pain and fear... How did you do it? How did Peter do it?'

'He did it with a terrible courage. Sunny, I can't hide this from you. Some of the most appalling acts of evil in history have been committed by men and women who were convinced that what they were doing was absolutely right. We did a dreadful thing in the Citadel, but we did it in all humility; knowing that our actions were not the end of something, but only a new beginning. That beginning is ours now, but its outcome is still uncertain. It may be that in a hundred years people will shudder with disgust at what we did, call it an atrocity and hold us in utter contempt. It may be that we have made everything worse than it would have been otherwise. But it may also be that the historians of the future will look back and mark the Fall of Geneva - the Catastrophe - as the point at which the changes which began with the War in Heaven and End of Death became irreversible and launched mankind on the path of enlightenment; free at last from the shackles of a meaningless religion and ready to build the Republic of Heaven. It may also be that the outcome which Martin James sought by his seduction of you and Alfie will come to pass, and in a way which creates a genuine link between the temporal world and the spiritual. You know, don't you, that there are some worlds where men and women have no daemons?'

'Yes, I read about them in Peter's story-book.' I laughed and shuddered at the same time.

'It may be a story, but it's still true. Those people are human all the same. They have lives that can turn to good or ill, just as ours do.'

I could see what Arthur was driving at. The sacrifice would all be wasted if we let it. The loss still might all be in vain.

'Like her life you mean? Mistress Joyce?'

'Yes, Jane. Poor Jane. She adored Peter; you know that, don't you? She kept him going through all his years of poppy-addiction.'

'Yes, I know that. But...'

'But it was always so hard for her. It was difficult for everyone whose life became entangled with Lyra Belacqua's; but particularly for the women. They couldn't help but feel that they were taking second place to her, all of them - Jane Joyce, Lizzie Boreal, Judy Parry, Marisa Coulter, Serafina Pekkala and the rest. Lyra wasn't _safe_ - do you know what I mean? She carried mortal danger with her everywhere she went. She lived with it, worked with it. This world we're living in now - it was shaped by William Parry and Lyra Silvertongue, and something they did over fifty years ago. And not just this world, either. All the worlds of the Multiverse and the hidden world of the Metaverse were changed irrevocably by the actions of two twelve-year-old children. It's all quite extraordinary.'

'Yes.' I sighed. 'I'm not sure I understand it all yet, all this Multiverse and Metaverse stuff. I don't know if I ever will. There's so much I don't know. I don't know who told that witch to send her daemon down into the tunnel to rescue me, for example. And what about the Word of God? Were there any other copies left intact, or has it all gone to waste?'

'I don't know. But see, it doesn't matter. Yes, it would have helped if the knowledge and wisdom stored in the Crystal had been saved. But remember what you were told about information wanting to be free. It lives on - that research and learning lives on - in the minds of the people who discovered it. It isn't lost. Look!' Arthur swept his arm around his head. 'It's everywhere!'

'I hope so. I do hope so. I was so worried about it. And all right, Mister Shire, I'll go home if you insist.'

'I do insist,' he said, and his Sal winked at us.

I realised that I would have to catch my train in a minute or two, but I wanted to make the most of the short space of time that was left to us and there was one thing I needed to get absolutely clear in my mind.

'It's funny,' I said. 'I mean, what you said about Lyra and the effect she had on the people around her. Mistress Joyce was far too well-mannered to mention it, but I'm sure she thought that Peter and I had been lovers; that we'd slept together. Just imagine what she'd say if she found out we were at loggerheads for a lot of the time.' I had to stop speaking for a moment. 'Oh, Arthur. It was awful. I was beastly to him. I was absolutely horrible. When I wasn't teasing him and making fun of his wooden leg and his missing arm I was ordering him around, as if I'd been put in charge of him. I kept on acting all superior. How could I have been like that? How could I have been so awful? I didn't think I was a bad person, but I was, all the time, and I didn't even know it. I didn't know anything about anything. I was such a foul brat. I didn't deserve to get away. He didn't deserve to die. He certainly didn't deserve to die instead of me. He was worth something and I... I'm not worth a damn. Oh beggar it, beggar it, beggar it...'

I leaned forward and rested my head on Arthur's shoulder. He stood stock-still while I flung my arms around him and cried my eyes out.

'Sunny...'

'Yes?' I sniffled.

'Stand up. Look at me. You're not a bad person. Peter wasn't a bad person either.'

'Of course he wasn't!'

Arthur smiled. 'No. But he was so much harder on himself than he needed to be. He was ashamed of himself - over the poppy and about Lyra, in a way you probably don't understand. He felt guilty about her - he felt she came between Jane and himself. He was ashamed of his feelings for you - both the disgust and the desire. Don't you ever be like that.'

'He was a gentleman. Nothing improper happened between us, not even when we were forced to share a bed. I had no idea he wanted me, not at first. But you and I - we know the truth, don't we? We know who his girl was all along, and she wasn't me, was she?'

'No,' said Arthur, 'She wasn't you. There was only ever one girl for Peter...' He fixed his eyes on me once more.

_Look..._

And briefly, just for a moment, it was as if someone was showing a kino in the clear air between us and I saw England on a sunny, blustery day and a silver-shining, reed-fringed river and on it a punt gliding downstream; and in that punt there were two people, a young man and a young woman, dressed for a summer's day out on the Isis. As I watched open-mouthed, the punt drifted to the side of the river and came to rest under a stand of willow trees. The young man leapt ashore and held out his hand to the fair-haired girl who, lifting the hem of her long muslin dress, stood up and followed him. As her feet touched the bank she turned to face me and I saw her eyes; pale-blue and glowing with joyful anticipation. A strange sensation took hold of me, and I shivered although the afternoon was warm. There was a lump in my throat that I didn't seem to be able to swallow.

Then the vision dissolved into the air and I was standing in the busy yard of Oxford station once more. 'Yes,' I said, rubbing at my eyes again. 'Only ever one girl. Oh, Arthur - is he happy now? Is Peter happy? I do so want him to be. He was never very happy when I knew him and that wasn't fair, was it?'

'No, it wasn't. But Sunny, I don't think you're asking the right question. You see, for Peter there is no _now_, not any more. There's only forever.'

'But has all the pain gone? Is he happy in his forever?'

'Yes, I'm sure he is. Didn't you feel it, just a minute ago?'

'Yes, I felt something... it was like Alfie running his tail down my back or tickling my ears with his whiskers. Lovely; but I wasn't sure how long I could stand it.'

'Peter is part of all of us now. He lives in our memories, but also... Do you remember what Peter told you about Dust, when you were hiding out in Geneva?'

'He said that Dust is particles of consciousness. And we gathered it to help Peter walk. It helped us. It was on our side.'

'I'm glad you said that. I don't think the healing Dust would have come when I called if it didn't believe that what we were doing was for the best in the end, whatever the cost now. It's only a small consolation, I know.'

'All those people killed... You told me that atrocities have been committed in the past by people who sincerely believed that God was on their side. Is our belief in the goodness of Dust any different?'

Arthur shook his head. 'How can we tell? Sunny, you're asking the same question I've been asking myself. We can only wait and see and do what we can, and hope.'

'It's so hard... But I know what I saw and what I felt when the Dust came to us in the Cantonal Hospital. I'm sure it was good, not evil. Aren't you?'

'Yes, I am. I'm certain that Peter and Viola have become one with the Dust of the Multiverse, just as Lyra and Pan did before them. They're everywhere - wherever there is thought, and life, and love, and joy.'

'You mean he's dissolved into Dust? You mean he's not Peter any more? Is that what's going to happen to me and Alfie?'

'Not for a long time yet, if what I think is going to happen to you turns out to be true.'

'But... I'd hate not to be _me_. That'd be awful, just fading away like that, however wonderful it felt. I couldn't stand it.'

Arthur put a hand on my shoulder. 'Don't you worry about that. I can't imagine you, of all people, fading away. Far from it!' He laughed and I laughed with him.

'You see? You'll still be Sunny, and Peter is still Peter, even while he lives on in the breath of the worlds. And Sunny... you had a dream about Peter, didn't you?'

'Yes... He and his brother were flying kites. They were running on the grass. The sun was shining.'

'Remember that Peter too, won't you? That Peter didn't suffer any pain. That Peter was whole, and happy, and free. Remember him as you saw him last, full of the power and joy of the life of the universe.'

'Yes, I will. Thank you,' I said after a minute's silence. A locomotive whistle blew in the distance and I was drawn back to the immediate present. 'I think I ought to be going now, Mister Shire. _Au revoir_.' I kissed him on the cheek.

'Goodbye, Sunny. _Bonne chance_.' And suddenly he had vanished. I shook my head in wonderment and walked into the station, Alfie on my arm, bought a ticket, and stood on the platform. The Paddington train drew in and I got into a third-class compartment and bagged a window seat. The train pulled out of the station and I turned to watch Oxford disappear into the smoke behind us. Only twenty minutes' journey to Goring. I sat back with Alfie on my lap. We had the compartment to ourselves.

_We will see Arthur again soon, won't we?_

_Yes_, said Alfie confidently. _Of course we will. We'll ask him to tell us about everything they did in the Citadel of Geneva while we were escaping through the tunnel. And we'll write to Mistress Joyce and tell her all the things we couldn't tell her today, and one day she'll find the courage to read Peter's book._

_Good._

We would reach Goring before long, and there would be somebody there to meet me. Arthur had said so. It would be a little like it used to be in the school holidays when I was a little girl; like it was in my dream on the train in Frankland just before I met Peter. There would be no Gerry to come aboard and take my bags, of course - he was part of the Dust of the universe now, like Peter and Viola. But soon Daddy would be home, and maybe I'd be able to make friends with Aunt Sybil after all if I tried hard enough.

_You two are more alike than you know_, said Alfie with a wry smile.

We were gathering speed. I dug in my tunic pocket for a packet of cigarettes but decided against lighting one and put them away again. Instead I took my notebook from my pocket and started to write, trying not to let the motion of the train and the sling which supported my left arm get in the way:

_The stars above,  
The sea below,  
A cloak of fear,  
A pall of woe._

_Another time,  
A far-off place,  
A swift goodbye,  
A lover's face,_

_And you and I  
Will never hear  
His voice again,  
Or feel him near,_

_Except in dreams,  
Or else in signs  
We've yet to see,  
Along the lines_

_And tracks of trains  
That restless roam,  
Until they find  
And take us home._

_That's for Gerry, isn't it_? said Alfie. _The real Gerry, I mean._

_Yes_, I replied, _but it's for Peter too. We mustn't ever forget him._

_No we won't. How could we possibly do that?_

I looked up. A familiar landscape was passing by the carriage window and I was surprised to find that we were already very nearly home. Time had passed swiftly while I had been writing. We were slowing down - our journey coming to its end. There was a puff of smoke from the front of the train, the engine's whistle blew twice and we rumbled across a level crossing and came to a gentle halt at Goring station, with the steam hissing from the train's brakes. I put my face to the window and looked out. Oh yes, there she was. There was my Aunt Sybil standing self-importantly on the platform and waiting for me as Arthur had promised. Next to her stood a porter ready with a hand-cart to carry my non-existent baggage, and next to him was the station master to make sure that everything was done properly and according to form. Trust my aunt to get the railway staff standing in line and dancing attendance on her.

I drew a deep breath. _Here we go, then_, I said, sliding the carriage window down and reaching out with my good arm to unlatch the door.

_Here we go_, said Alfie.


	27. Afterword

**_Afterthoughts_**

**_Story-writing_**

One day I may sit down in advance and plan a story in great detail from beginning to end. I thought I'd done that with this one. But, somewhere in Mornington the tale turned left instead of right and instead of a pregnant Sunny arriving destitute in Oxford and being taken on as a worker in one of Cholmondley and Joyce's factories... Well, now you know what really happened.

_**Peter and Viola**_

"I cannot say whether we shall ever see Peter or Jane again, nor is it at all likely that we shall learn how their lives will turn out - for good or ill, happy or sad, together or apart - but I trust that they, following their hearts and listening carefully to their daemons, will follow the path that seems right to them."

Phooey! I simply _had_ to bring Peter's story to a conclusion. I gave him a difficult life and it seems desperately unfair for it to have gone that way, especially after he set out with so much promise. To have died at the age of only forty-two after almost twenty years of pain and drug addiction doesn't sound like a fortunate or a fulfilled life, does it? I can only hope his achievements and experiences made up for it to some extent. I also hope that Arthur clarified what Will Parry's father once said about life after death in the world of _HDM_. I'm sure he never meant to imply that your unique personality would dissolve away after death, like sugar in tea.

Goodbye, Peter. I'm going to miss you. Oh, and by the way - despite any apparent similarities and insofar as any writer can honestly claim to be distinct from his creations Peter isn't me. Or, to put it another way, if I had to choose someone to represent me it wouldn't be him, but another character altogether...

_**Songs**_

Every chapter (except for _Hampstead Heath_) was headed by a quotation from a popular song, but I didn't tell you their titles or where they came from. Here's the complete list:

Home: _You Are My Sunshine_ (Most recently heard on the soundtrack of the film _O Brother, Where Art Thou?_ (2000))  
The Chthonic Railway: _When Sunny Gets Blue_ (I was thinking of the version by Nat King Cole)  
Highdean: _Love Letters Straight From The Heart_ (As sung by Elvis Presley)  
The Streets Of London: _Moon River_ (From the film _Breakfast At Tiffany's_ (1961))  
Mornington: _A Transport Of Delight_ (From the revue _At The Drop Of A Hat_)  
Kensington Gardens: _Alfie_ (From the 1966 film of the same title. Accept no substitute!)  
The Day Room: _Dance, Little Lady_ (From the revue _This Year Of Grace_)  
Chelsea Barracks: _Jolly Good Luck To The Girl Who Loves A Soldier_ (This Great War recruiting song features in the Arcus Theatre Company presentation of _Our Grandmother's War_. Book us! We're very reasonable!)  
The Chain: _When Sunny Gets Blue_ again  
Pompey: _Sea Fever_ (Originally a poem, but it was later set to music by John Ireland)  
The Convoy: _The Green Fields Of France_ (Although this protest song is ostensibly about the Great War of 1914-1918, it dates from 1976)  
The Comrades Three: _Early One Morning_ (Everyone must have sung this folk song at school at some time or another)  
The Crossroads: _Crossroads_ (In the performance by The Cream. Eric Clapton's finest hour!)  
On The _Marie-Louise_: _I'm Only Sleeping_ (From _Revolver_)  
In The Sight Of God: _Smoke On The Water_ (Every guitarist know this classic Deep Purple riff)  
The Alethiometer: _I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter_  
On The Road: _On the Road Again_ (The Canned Heat version from 1968)  
The Copse: _Going Underground_ (A great anti-war single from The Jam)  
The Dome: _Kites_ (By Simon Dupree and the Big Sound)  
The Attic: _Days of Pearly Spencer_ (A huge hit in 1967 for David McWilliams)  
The Citadel: _All Along The Watchtower_ (From another fine 1968 LP,_ John Wesley Harding_)  
The Brothers: _The Two Magicians_ (Collected by Francis J. Child and listed as Child Ballad no. 44)  
The Voice Of God: _Within You, Without You_ (From _Sergeant Pepper_)  
The Word Of God: _We Gotta Get Out Of This Place_ (a 60s hit for The Animals)  
The Clockmaker's Girl: _The End_ (From _Abbey Road_)

_**Sunny**_

If you found Sunny's negative qualities of vanity, rudeness, selfishness and snobbery off-putting and dislikeable at the beginning of the story I hope they were eventually outweighed by her virtues of courage, kindness, courtesy and understanding at its end. They were always there inside her but it took the events of the Holy War to bring them out. Had she not been driven to run away from school and join the Ambulance Brigade I think she might have turned into a Marisa Coulter or a Lizzie Boreal; beautiful and intelligent but also cruel, manipulative and self-serving.

Will I write any more about her? I don't know. I've given up on making predictions or promises about what I will or won't do as they always turn out to be wrong.

**_Thanks_**

Thank you as ever for reading this far. A special thank you also goes to my reviewers - especially Danny Barefoot - and to the Sraffie community at the Republic of Heaven for their support and their continuous flow of interesting and stimulating ideas.

Sunny's war has little in common with the Great War of 1914-1918, but my description of her experiences was informed by FW's researches into the life of women combatants and non-combatants during that conflict. If it were not for her I should have known even less than I do about World War 1 and women's roles in it and so my last and most significant thanks go to FW who, all unknowing, was the greatest help of all.

Ceres, November 2005

**_There's more..._**

This is not the end of Sunny's story! She also appears in _The Interview_, _On The Ramparts_ and the forthcoming _Night Of A Thousand Stars_ which can be found right here on


	28. The Moons and the Greshams

**The Moons and the Greshams - a short family history**

If Sunny were so inclined, she could trace her family history back to the Norman Invasion of 1107. But the Moon family first began to come to prominence in the seventeenth century when William Moon and Hortense bought a farm in South Oxfordshire, not far from present-day Goring and Streatley.

The Moons were typical yeoman farmers - minor landowners with a few good fields and a family pew halfway down the nave of the village church, well behind the squire's. But there was _something_ about them. Something special, you might say. They were a little more hard-working, a little shrewder, a little more ambitious than their neighbours, and as time passed they built up their fortunes, making strong progress in the good years and not falling back very far when times were hard.

By the end of the twentieth century they were prosperous landowners and in a position to consider entering Society - the greater world that had its home in London. But they were still farmers, workers and countrymen at heart.

Until the twenty-year-old Ronald Moon, seeing that his father had many years of working life ahead of him and not particularly enjoying farming, decided to go to sea, despite family objections. He was just as clever and energetic as his forebears and he made swift progress up the rigid naval command structure, becoming a full four-ring captain at the very early age of thirty-five. This was exceptional, for Brytain was a nation at peace.

Ronald might have continued in his naval career, and risen to the very top of the tree, if he had not met, at a Consular party in Lisbon, Lady Cora Gresham.

The Greshams were always aristocrats. They had possessed dukedoms and earldoms across the length and breadth of Brytain since the Invasion and their wealth was incalculable. But every family has its rich and poor members, and the branch of the Greshams to which Cora and her ten years older sister Sybil belonged was very far from being wealthy. No Gresham would ever starve or be reduced to seeking Parish Relief, but the allowance that trickled down to Sybil and Cora was meagre indeed. They had no real home of their own, but were obliged to rely on the charity of their their better-off relatives. It was while travelling with a cousin in the Diplomatic Corps - a rare treat, indeed - that Cora - pale, delicate, ethereally beautiful Lady Cora - met the bluff, hearty but also kindly and considerate Ronald Moon.

He wooed her in his rough and ready style and she responded in her own, altogether more refined, manner. They were married in St Anselms Church, in Goring. The Greshams sent a spare Marquis as a place-holder. Cora lost her title.

But not for long. As I have said, the Moons were ambitious and Ronald, at his father's prompting, left the Navy and stood for Parliament. The combination of his energy and intelligence and Cora's family connections enabled the Moons finally to get a foothold in Brytish politics and enter an entirely new stratum of society. It was a love-match, Ronald's and Cora's, but it was also the alliance that both families needed.

Gerald Gresham Moon was born two years after Ronald and Cora were married. Their daughter Sonya Clarice Moon followed five years later, a gap explained by Ronald's frequent absences at the Great Parliament. By this time, Ronald Moon had received his knighthood and his wife had become Lady Cora once more.

And then, when Sonya was twelve, Cora died of consumption. She had never been strong. It was at this time that Sybil Gresham came to live permanently at Sunny's home intending, as she saw it, nothing but good.

Losing her mother at such a critical age had a terrible effect on Sonya. Her _specialness_ was just emerging at that time, and she would have benefited greatly from a mother's advice and understanding. She could never confide in her father - his grief was too deep for that - and it was her beloved elder brother Gerry she told when it became clear that she would always be crucially different from other girls of her age. Brother and sister became closer than ever as a result.

Then came the conflict we now know as the Holy War. Gerry was lost at sea only a couple of days after the fighting started. This was a second blow for Sunny and her father. By now, Sir Ronald Moon was next in line to the Prime Minister and might reasonably have been expected to assume the leadership of his country some day, but when reserve officers were recalled to service he set aside the protections which his position as a cabinet minister afforded him and went back to his ship. In many ways he had never left her.

In the light of her brother's and her father's examples, it is no surprise that Sunny ran away from Highdean School and joined the Ambulance Brigade. She neatly embodied the attributes of both the Gresham and the Moon families. She had her mother's beauty and her father's intelligence and determination.

And she always got her way...


End file.
